Prohibition history
Prohibition in Hawaii.
Hawaii had no statewide prohibition before 1920. The 18th Amendment, which the state ratified, closed its legal liquor trade on 17 January that year. Today we list 7 speakeasies and hidden bars in Hawaii.
Prohibition in Hawaii, in order
| 1917–19 | Congress passes the 18th Amendment and sends it to the states. |
|---|---|
| 16 January 1919 | The amendment is ratified nationally. Hawaii ratified it. |
| 17 January 1920 | National Prohibition begins. |
| 7 April 1933 | The Cullen–Harrison Act legalises 3.2% beer. |
| 5 December 1933 | The 21st Amendment repeals Prohibition. |
What Prohibition looked like here
Hawaii came to Prohibition late, with a legal liquor trade still running on the day the amendment took effect. States in that position lost a visible industry overnight — breweries, distilleries, saloons, the men who worked in them — and the resentment that followed shows up in how little local enforcement there was to speak of.
It also meant there was plant. Breweries that had made beer in 1919 could make it again in 1920 if anyone was willing to risk it, and a good deal of what the federal agents found in the first years was simply the old industry carrying on quietly.
A territory, and a war port
Hawaii was a territory in 1920 and the federal ban applied to it directly. Enforcement was a naval and customs matter as much as a civilian one, and Honolulu’s trade ran on what arrived by ship.
Very little of the territory’s 1920s press has been digitised into the Chronicling America archive, so the newspaper section of this page is thin. That is a gap in the archive rather than a finding about Hawaii.
What Hawaii’s own newspapers printed
Very little of Hawaii’s 1920s press has been digitised in the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America archive, so we have no newspaper evidence to show you for this state yet. That is a gap in the archive, not a finding about Hawaii.
We re-run this search as the archive grows. If you know of a digitised Hawaii title from the period, we would like to hear about it.
Where to drink in Hawaii now
We currently list 7 speakeasies and hidden bars in Hawaii. The densest are Honolulu (4), East Honolulu (1), Hilo (1), Ewa Beach (1). Those are present-day licensed bars — nothing on this site is illegal, and a modern hidden bar is a design decision rather than a legal necessity.
A handful of rooms in most states genuinely date to the period and can show it. Far more claim to. Where a venue’s page makes a historical claim, we label it Documented, Reported, Legend or Venue marketing, and we do not promote marketing into history because it makes a better paragraph.
Where they are in Hawaii
Listings cluster where the building stock and the licensing both allow it. These are the Hawaii cities and towns with the most in the directory today.
| Honolulu | 4 listed |
|---|---|
| East Honolulu | 1 listed |
| Hilo | 1 listed |
| Ewa Beach | 1 listed |
Where this state fits
We group Hawaii with the West for editorial purposes — regions tuned to drinking culture and Prohibition history rather than to Census divisions, because those are the lines that actually explain what happened. Its neighbours here: California · Colorado · Oregon · Washington · Montana · Idaho · Wyoming · Alaska.
The parts of the national story that bear most directly on Hawaii: Rum running and Rum Row.
How to read these pages
Each state chronology sets the local dates against the national ones, because Prohibition was never one story. Thirty-three states had already banned liquor before the federal government did; two refused to ratify the amendment at all; and repeal in 1933 handed the question straight back to the states, which is why American liquor law is still fifty systems rather than one.
The newspaper evidence is drawn from Chronicling America, the Library of Congress’s archive of digitised American newspapers. It is public domain, it is free, and we link to the scanned page rather than quoting it, so you can check us.