Why “Kona Echo”?

Originally founded by Dr. Harvey Saburo Hayashi in 1897.

He opened a practice in Honomu when he first arrived in Hawaii, but he soon moved it to Kailua-Kona.

In 1897, Hayashi started the Kona Echo (コナ反響), Kona's first newspaper and Hawaii's second Japanese language newspaper. He and his family worked together to publish it twice a week, though its publication decreased in frequency until it published bimonthly for the last ten years of its existence. The Japanese section was discontinued in 1940, and the entire newspaper folded in 1941.

The newspaper was intended to inform and educate the Japanese community in Kona, reflecting Hayashi’s strict, often uncompromising, personality.

Hayashi was a major figure in the Kona Japanese community. He helped to establish the Japanese cemetery in 1896, then he founded the Japanese language school in Holualoa in 1898.

Kona Echo as it was, when it was Dr. Hayashi's Newspaper