Hawaiian War Chant
song adapted from "Kāua I Ka Huahuaʻi" by Prince Leleiohoku of Hawaii
"Hawaiian War Chant" is an American popular song whose original melody and lyrics were written in the 1860s by Prince Leleiohoku. The original title of the song was Kāua I Ka Huahuaʻi or "We Two in the Spray." It was not written as a chant, and the Hawaiian lyrics describe a clandestine meeting between two lovers, not a battle. The English title therefore has nothing to do with the song as it was originally written and performed in Hawaii.
History
Under the original title, the song was recorded around June 1911 by the Crowel Glee Club, and released by Columbia Records.
English lyrics by Ralph Freed were written in 1936 and the melody changed somewhat at that time by Johnny Noble. Tommy Dorsey recorded it on November 29, 1938, and it was released on Victor Records in the United States and Canada. In a 1942 performance, Dorsey's band featured drummer Buddy Rich and trumpeter Ziggy Elman for this song. The song was featured in the 1942 film Ship Ahoy starring Eleanor Powell, Red Skelton and the Tommy Dorsey Band. The song features prominently in Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room, a Disney theme park attraction that first opened at Disneyland in 1963.
Spike Jones recorded the song for Victor Records in February 1946 with Carl Grayson on vocal.
“Hawaiian War Chant” enters the record as song adapted from "Kāua I Ka Huahuaʻi" by Prince Leleiohoku of Hawaii. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Hawaiian, Chant and song can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Hawaiian War Chant” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Hawaiian, Chant and song provides the most credible route into that argument.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5684586. The Library of Congress control number is no2026091592. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1911, 1936, 1938 and 1942.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hawaiian War Chant” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.