Los Angeles is recognized as one of the most culturally diverse cities in the United States. Due to opportunities in the entertainment and aerospace industries, as well as easy access to the city's busy ports, Los Angeles remains an attractive destination for people from around the world. Since the 1960s, Native Hawaiian families have taken part in this migration to Los Angeles, bringing their unique culture as well as heartbreaking stories of loss of their ancestral homeland. Approximately 8,500 Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders currently live within the city of Los Angeles and continue to retain a great pride for their ancestors and the contributions that have made them who they are today.

Los Angeles is recognized as one of the most culturally diverse cities in the United States. Due to opportunities in the entertainment and aerospace industries, as well as easy access to the city's busy ports, Los Angeles remains an attractive destination for people from around the world. Since the 1960s, Native Hawaiian families have taken part in this migration to Los Angeles, bringing their unique culture as well as heartbreaking stories of loss of their ancestral homeland. Approximately 8,500 Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders currently live within the city of Los Angeles and continue to retain a great pride for their ancestors and the contributions that have made them who they are today.

Immigration from Puerto Rico from 1850 to 1925 to both California and to Hawaii is identified, and analyzed. Over 350 names of these immigrants were identified via an analysis of the U.S. Federal Census including the 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900, and 1910 Censuses were reviewed and names were identified, and extracted. Over 400 sources identified in the Bibliography, many of which are "primary sources", along with 32 "Exhibits" (photos, images, charts and tables) are presented.

How did Hawaiian and Polynesian culture come to dramatically alter American music, fashion and decor, as well as ideas about race, in less than a century? It began with mainland hula and musical performances in the late 19th century, rose dramatically as millions shipped to Hawaii during the Pacific War, then made big leap with the advent of low-cost air travel. By the end of the 1950s, mainlanders were hosting tiki parties, listening to exotic music, lazing on rattan furniture in Hawaiian shirts and, of course, surfing. Increasingly, they were marrying people outside of their own racial groups as well. The author describes how this cultural conquest came about and the people and events that led to it.

Despite a genuine admiration for Native Hawaiian culture, white Californians of the 1930s ignored authentic relationships with Native Hawaiians. Surfing became a central part of what emerged instead: a beach culture of dressing, dancing, and acting like an Indigenous people whites idealized. Patrick Moser uses surfing to open a door on the cultural appropriation practiced by Depression-era Californians against a backdrop of settler colonialism and white nationalism. Recreating the imagined leisure and romance of life in Waikīkī attracted people buffeted by economic crisis and dislocation. California-manufactured objects like surfboards became a physical manifestation of a dream that, for all its charms, emerged from a white impulse to both remove and replace Indigenous peoples. Moser traces the rise of beach culture through the lives of trendsetters Tom Blake, John “Doc” Ball, Preston “Pete” Peterson, Mary Ann Hawkins, and Lorrin “Whitey” Harrison while also delving into California’s control over images of Native Hawaiians via movies, tourism, and the surfboard industry. Compelling and innovative, Waikīkī Dreams opens up the origins of a defining California subculture.