The idea emerged in March 1918, when the Daughters and Sons of Hawaiian Warriors proposed honoring the territory's war volunteers. The Honolulu Ad Club took up the cause, and by December 1918 a committee had formed under Colonel Howard Hathaway to bring together civic organizations and settle on a design. What they chose was unusual: not a statue or a plaque but a functional public facility, a saltwater swimming pool on the beach at Waikiki. The Natatorium opened on August 24, 1927, its Beaux-Arts entrance arches framing views of the ocean beyond. The memorial was dedicated not to death but to the living, a place where the community could gather and play in the waters the volunteers had crossed to reach the war.

Saltwater is relentless architecture criticism. By the late 1970s, the Natatorium's concrete and steel had deteriorated badly enough that the city closed the pool on safety grounds. What followed was not demolition or restoration but political paralysis. City council support oscillated between the two options for decades. Renovation studies were commissioned and shelved. A 2018-2019 environmental impact study estimated that the preferred restoration option would cost around 25.6 million dollars and warned of "significant and adverse" socio-cultural impact if nothing were done. The Natatorium sits on the National Register of Historic Places, which complicates demolition. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has advocated for its repair. Meanwhile, the structure continues to corrode, each year of inaction narrowing the range of what can be saved.

Adjacent to the Natatorium lies Kaimana Beach, also known as Sans Souci Beach, named for a hotel run by George Lycurgus in 1893. The name, French for "without worries," was borrowed from Frederick the Great's Sanssouci Palace in Potsdam. Before the Natatorium was built, Kaimana was a rocky shore with a narrow strip of sand. The structure's seawall altered local currents, allowing sand to accumulate into the wide beach that draws Honolulu residents today. Beneath the sand lies a different kind of history. In 1902, Duke Kahanamoku's uncle, David Piikoi, dragged the first submarine communications cable between California and Hawaii through Kapua Channel and onto this shore. On January 1, 1903, Henry Ernest Cooper sent the first telegraphic message over the new cable to President Theodore Roosevelt in Washington, D.C.

The Natatorium's name, Kaimana, is itself a borrowed thing. It is not an ancient Hawaiian place name but the Hawaiian-language rendering of "Diamond," for nearby Diamond Head. The beach hotel that replaced the Sans Souci, the New Otani Kaimana Beach Hotel, carries the borrowed name forward. The Natatorium stands at the intersection of all these layers: Hawaiian heritage, colonial-era naming, World War I patriotism, mid-century recreation, and twenty-first-century preservation politics. Its arches still frame the Pacific. Its pool is empty. Whether it will be restored as a functioning memorial or demolished and replaced with something new remains, after more than four decades of debate, genuinely unresolved. What is certain is that the 10,000 volunteers it was built to honor deserve better than indecision.