Coconut Butter

Let's stay "in the kitchen" a little longer. Lettie Yoshimura told me that during the war the first shipments of military assistance for the islanders included laced-up leather children's shoes--not very useful in Hawaii, where children rarely wore such shoes. (In fact, in those days, it was common to see rows of shoes and slippers lined up outside the classroom door, leaving children to walk barefoot in class.)

Another shipment Lettie remembers is pototoes. She said, "For rice-eating people they sent potatoes! My mother traded them for a pair of nylons."

There were many substitutions made during the war. One of them was for butter. The University of Hawaii Extension Service developed a method to make butter from coconuts. It took ten coconuts to make a pound of butter. Color and vitamin A were added by means of a fatty extract of the lipstick plant. (“Home Economists and Emergency War Measures in Honolulu,” by Katherine Bazore and Marian Weaver. JOURNAL OF HOME ECONOMICS 34-3. March 1942)

Not one of the women I interviewed remembered butter from coconuts and no one remembers even seeing the recipe in the newspapers.(During the war, recipes that used little fuel, or reduced the amounts of rationed food were published in the newspapers.) However, coconut butter was a "fact" in World War II Hawaii.

Women of World War II Hawaii