Longtime and former Kailua residents whose families shaped the recent history of the area have joined to share their memories in a book that gives insight into the character of the town in the early 1900s.

"Kailua: Finding Our Place in the Ahupua'a" will be launched at an 11 a.m. luncheon May 8 at Luana Hills Country Club in Maunawili Valley, where many of these people who contributed to the book lived, worked and played.

Rich in Island culture from early Hawaiians to later immigrants, Kailua stood to lose this historical perspective as the elders pass away. But curiosity about his new home in 1981 led Paul Brennan, an anthropologist, to explore the valley and later interview more than 100 people who lived there.

The traces of archaeological finds began to connect with the oral histories, Brennan said.

"Their stories dovetailed ... complemented each other ... added new information, nuances of understanding, and it's just amazing to sit back and see how it all came together, because it was not a planned book in the beginning," he said.

Other contributors to the book include biology professor John Culliney, who will explain the development of the volcano, Kawai Nui Marsh and the reef there; Sally Bowman; and Maya Saffery and Kahi DeSilva, who will connect the Hawaiian mythology and culture to modern Kailua.

It all began 28 years ago when Brennan's curiosity set him out on hikes in the valley. A $100,000 grant from the Harold K.L. Castle Foundation six years ago made it possible to get the book completed and published.

In it, the reader will meet familiar names and learn little-known historical facts, such as that St. Stephen's Diocesan Center, at the hairpin turn on Pali Highway, was the home of Harold K.L. Castle and that there was a thriving community at the entrance to Maunawili Valley that included five stores, a blacksmith, a poi factory and a school. City Mill has roots in Maunawili, where the business owners once operated a rice mill.

Joe Kaniaupio, born in 1924, lived in Maunawili and would ride his horse to school, and for fun, all the way to Waimanalo. His father owned an okolehau still.

Mabel Mashita, born in 1921, lived in Keolu Hills, where her family farmed, then moved to Maunawili after marrying and worked a nine-acre farm.

Erling Hedemann moved to Lanikai when he was 12, and remembers working at Harold Castle's (his uncle) home. He later ran a landscape business and lived at the Hedemann Estate in the valley but had to move in 1986 when the property was sold to a golf course developer.

The Matsuda Store, behind where the Castle Medical Center is today, showed Japanese silent films, and a Japanese storyteller would entertain people with drums, whistles and other instruments, Brennan said.

"He provided the narration of these silent Japanese movies, and they were a big deal for people without, in many cases, even a radio," he said.

The luncheon, open to the public, will include emcee Nalani Olds and a panel of five people who will tell their own stories of the past.