The Honolulu Military Academy was founded by its president, Col. L. G. Blackman, in 1911. It was controlled by a board of 10 trustees of which the president was a member and presiding officer ex officio. It had no endowment, but owned a fine piece of property consisting of about 100 acre (0.404686 km²) of ground and six buildings, and was valued at $200,000. It was located at Kaimuki near Waialae Bay, a mile from the end of the Waialae street-car line. The buildings stood on high ground overlooking the ocean.

The school drew its cadets from all points in the islands. The 1918-19 roster showed 64 from Honolulu, 10 from Oahu

Oahu

Oahu or Oahu , known as "The Gathering Place", is the third largest of the Hawaiian Islands and most populous of the islands in the U.S. state of Hawaii. The state capital Honolulu is located on the southeast coast...

 outside of Honolulu, 16 from Hawaii

Hawaii

Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...

, 11 from Maui

Maui

The island of Maui is the second-largest of the Hawaiian Islands at and is the 17th largest island in the United States. Maui is part of the state of Hawaii and is the largest of Maui County's four islands, bigger than Lānai, Kahoolawe, and Molokai. In 2010, Maui had a population of 144,444,...

, 10 from Kauai

Kauai

Kauai or Kauai, known as Tauai in the ancient Kaua'i dialect, is geologically the oldest of the main Hawaiian Islands. With an area of , it is the fourth largest of the main islands in the Hawaiian archipelago, and the 21st largest island in the United States. Known also as the "Garden Isle",...

, 1 from Molokai

Molokai

Molokai or Molokai is an island in the Hawaiian archipelago. It is 38 by 10 miles in size with a land area of , making it the fifth largest of the main Hawaiian Islands and the 27th largest island in the United States. It lies east of Oahu across the 25-mile wide Kaiwi Channel and north of...

, 2 from California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, and 1 each from New York State, Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

, and Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

. The military regime as the title of the school indicates is was a dominant feature of its organization. It began at first with instruction only in the elementary grades; but it grew to offer a 12-grade program of studies, and was organized in three divisions, an elementary school, grades 1-6; a junior academy, grades 7, 8, 9: and a senior academy, grades 10, 11, 12.