Mo Radke grew up in Seattle, joined the U.S. Navy in 1976 and wound up stationed in Hawaiʻi in 1992 — 16 years after the Waikīkī War Memorial Natatorium was declared unsafe and closed to the public.
He didn’t know much about it until 2007, when his wife, Jill, who was then director of development at the Historic Hawaiʻi Foundation, told him the memorial was going to be torn down.
“I came home from work one day and my wife was crying,” Radke said. “I asked her, ʻWhat’s the matter?’ And she kept saying, ‘It’s so unfair, it’s so unfair.’”
So Radke did some research…