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of the producers and the strenuous efforts of Hawaii's school children combined to keep the percentage of decline in production at a low figure compared with the percentage of loss of lands and labor. At the fiscal year's end, plans for the importation of 6,000 laborers for these industries were nearly completed.

The United States Agricultural Adjustment Agency during the year approved payments totalling $8,210,656.05 to 36 plantation producers, 1,566 adherent planters and 3 individual planters for compliance with the child labor, minimum wage and other requirements under the Sugar Act of 1937.

GOVERNMENTAL SERVICES

TERRITORIAL AND COUNTY

All departments and agencies of the Territorial and county governments were severely handicapped in their efforts to provide the services and facilities needed by the island's war-swollen civilian and service populations by labor and material and equipment shortages. Territorial departments generally were operating with staffs numbering about 85 percent of prewar normal.

Ambulance calls by Honolulu's emergency receiving station totalled 7,834 in 1944 compared with 1,935 in 1940. At the fiscal year's end, the Honolulu fire department, though considerably reduced in strength from the critical days of 1942, was maintaining 21 engine companies compared with 10 in 1941. Six members of the department were proud wearers of the Purple Heart for wounds received while fighting fires on December 7, 1941, when 3 firemen were killed.

Police departments throughout the islands reported shortages of personnel but the large increase in population, and a tremendously greater traffic control problem, made the situation particularly acute in Honolulu where the Department faced an average shortage of 125 men, or 28 percent of its authorized strength, during the year. An average during the year of 180 volunteer business and professional men, many of whom had served since the start of the war, assisted the department by performing regular motor patrol police work, using their own radio equipped cars, on seven full tours of night duty in every 6 weeks.

In spite of population increases and shortages of regular police officers, major offenses reported during the year 1944, which totalled 5,315, had increased only slightly over the 1941 total of 5,093, and figures for the first 6 months of 1945 indicated a downward trend.

However, there was food for sober thought in the fact that traffic deaths in 1944 reached an all time high of 82; and that, while arrests of male juveniles declined about 3 percent during the war years,

arrests of female juveniles had increased almost 60 percent during the same period. The 1945 legislature made provision for the establishment of a new separate juvenile court.

Sewer extension work in Honolulu, interrupted by the Japanese attack, had not resumed at the end of the past fiscal year and the city had not yet been able to return to prewar standards its rubbish and garbage collection schedules. Inadequate maintenance forces struggled vainly to keep Territorial and county road and highway systems, battered by war traffic for which they were never adequate, from complete disintegration.

Consumption of water in Honolulu had increased by 77 percent, and the development with the assistance of the Federal Works Agency during the past year of an additional supply of 15 million gallons per day from a new source served to relieve to some extent a serious threat to the city's artesian water reserves.

The water systems serving the rural areas were beset with difficulties largely involving problems of water supply for the extensive military installations located throughout those areas.

The Territory's public libraries, notwithstanding their limited personnel, continued to extend the hours during which their morale building facilities and services were available to civilian and service personnel.

Active membership in the Territorial employees retirement system increased by 768 to total 12,678 members at the year's end. During the same period, its investments increased from $18,559,482.71 to $20,598,074.39, of which 45 percent was in United States Government securities. Three hundred eighty former employees on the system's pension rolls were paid $285,219.86 during the year, in addition to a monthly bonus required by 1945 legislation which totalled $9,375 for the month of June.

Service credits were being allowed, and both the Government's and employees' normal contributions to the system were being paid, for 599 members of the system who were on military leave.

During the year, the secretary of Hawaii recorded 80 executive acts of the Governor, including 13 proclamations, 36 executive orders and 31 rules promulgated under the authority of the Hawaii Defense Act. Fourteen Defense Act rules were rescinded during the year, either because of lack of continued necessity or transfer of authority to an appropriate permanent agency. At the year's end 45 Defense Act rules remained in effect.

Although the demand for certificates of Hawaiian birth had diminished from its peak of 1942, the office of the secretary of Hawaii continued its extensive service to the Veterans' Administration and other agencies seeking verification of claims to Hawaiian birth.

During the past year, the Office of War Information established headquarters in Honolulu for large-scale Central Pacific radio and leaflet operations accentuating the propaganda attack against the Japanese enemy. A powerful short-wave station constructed on Oahu provided programs for a standard-wave transmitter on Saipan and also supplied material relayed from the west coast. The extensive Japanese language work involved was performed largely by a staff of Americans of Japanese ancestry recruited in Hawaii.

In addition to the Federal agencies mentioned elsewhere herein, others operating within the Territory in the discharge of functions directly allied with the war effort included the War Manpower Commission, United States Employment Service, Civil Aeronautics Administration, United States Treasury's Foreign Funds Control, Hawaii National Park, Federal Housing Administration, Geological Survey Office, Farm Security Administration, Federal Works Agency, United States Employees Compensation Commission, Foreign Economic Administration, United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, United States Weather Bureau, United States Civil Service Commission, Reconstruction Finance Corporation, War Shipping Administration, Office of Defense Transportation, and War Production Board.

INSTITUTIONS

Reflecting the trend in juvenile delinquency, the Kawailoa Training School for Girls maintained an average daily ward population of 182, compared with 143 in the last prewar year. In spite of its inability to provide a full supervisory staff during the year, the school maintained its vocational training programs and, in addition to providing the services of 40 to 60 girls for laundry work for a nearby naval installation, paroled during the year 193 girls for employment in the community.

The average daily ward population of the Waialee Training School for Boys during the past year was 160 compared with 138 in the last prewar year. Here again, lack of supervisory personnel handicapped the training program but the boys supplied a good many man hours to the agricultural industries in their neighborhood, their earnings totalling $18,745 during the year. The school also supplied substantial quantities of farm products to other institutions. Many of the school's wards on parole or in the institution volunteered for or were drafted into the armed forces. The large majority maintained excellent service records and two gave their lives in action.

The Territorial legislature, on the Governor's recommendation, provided funds for land acquisition which will permit the removal of the school to a site more suitable for the maintenance of a modern Vocational education program.

Oahu prison's population at the end of the fiscal year totalled 482 compared with 476 at the end of the previous period. These included 22 Federal and 10 military prisoners. During the year, 54,401 man days of work were furnished to other institutions and county governments. The products of prison labor contributing to the war effort included substantial quantities of natural rubber from trees on the Islands of Oahu and Maui which was highly valued by the Navy. The legislature, following the Governor's recommendation, appropriated $200,000 for the purpose of developing a new site for the prison on government land on the island of Hawaii, which should permit eventual removal of the prison from the congested area of Honolulu and afford an opportunity for a real development of the Governor's program for rehabilitation of convicts through opportunities for work in connection with the development of new marketable products.

The director of institutions was also authorized to establish a scale of compensation under which prisoners may receive amounts up to 50 percent of the net realizations from the products of their work, which will provide additional work incentives and enable the accumulation of reserves to assist inmates upon their discharge.

PUBLIC WORKS

Labor and material shortages combined to delay progress on a number of projects vital to the Territorial welfare, including Federal assistance projects for additions to two Honolulu hospitals, the construction of two refuse incinerators and the extension of water distribution mains in Honululu. However, the past year saw the completion of a 100 bed addition to Queen's Hospital and the above-mentioned water development project, both of which were partially financed with Lanham Act funds.

The sum of $2,000,000 was appropriated to a newly created postwar highway fund to be used as a revolving fund in connection with the reconstruction of the Territory's war damaged highways for which reimbursement will be sought from the Federal Government. The legislature also transferred to the Territorial highway department the entire proceeds of the Territorial gasoline tax for the purpose of obtaining a more extensive use of these revenues to match federal funds available for the construction and reconstruction of our highways. At the same time, a board was created to make a study of and report on the regulation and taxation of motor vehicles and motor fuels and the financing of highway maintenance and construction by the Territory and its several counties.

Funds were also appropriated for extending further throughout the islands the Territory's system of airports and for improving facilities

at existing airports upon their return to the Territory by the military authorities.

Further autonomy was extended to the Territorial board of harbor commissioners, which was authorized in its discretion to expend limited portions of its revenues for permanent improvements to harbors and wharves, and a special appropriation was made for the purpose of financing the badly needed rehabilitation of war-damaged pier and wharf facilities in the postwar period.

PUBLIC UTILITIES

Gross revenues of the thirty nongovernmental public utilities operating in the Territory during the calendar year 1944 totalled $37,063,547.57 which was $13,619,751.64 or 58 percent in excess of comparable revenues for the year 1941. Operating facilities in every case were utilized to their limit. Increased demand upon those facilities during the three year period, and the extent of their use, is illustrated by the situation in the city and county of Honolulu whose largest transportation system carried 224 percent more passengers in 1944 than it had in 1941. Similarly, electric energy delivered increased 67 percent, gas delivered was up 65 percent and telephone calls were up 29 percent for local calls and 59 percent for toll calls. During the same period the net increase in plant accounts for the electric, gas and telephone utilities was about 25 percent.

With all inter-island surface transportation facilities in use almost exclusively for military purposes, air transportation of both passengers and freight between the islands increased greatly.

FINANCES

Territorial tax realizations, internal revenue collections, gross postal receipts and bank clearings for the year reached all-time highs, although the increase in nontaxable federal land holdings and the continued decline in revenues from gasoline and motor vehicle taxes were the cause of concern to the county governments which depend for support on these sources of revenue.

Tax collections for the account of the Territorial government (excluding real property taxes) during the fiscal year totalled $33,368,835.44, reflecting a slight increase over comparable collections of $33,083,466.74 during the previous year. The gross income and consumption tax base for the year was $980,758,833.57, compared with $929,938,947.90 for the previous year. The rate for these taxes was established by the legislature at 11⁄2 percent effective January 1, 1946.

The Territorial government's operating surplus at the end of the biennial accounting period was $5,043,003.57. The Territorial sinking

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