Having lived on Oahu....
Honolulu is a s hole of epic proportions. Look on any job site for any job and you will never find any job offering $300k to live there, or basically anywhere else on the island. Master Degree Engineering jobs didn’t even come close to 100k. I don’t know how people live in these places but I hope they stay because they are progressive dumps.
You’re right. One place I have never been is Hawaii, so a while back I was looking at walking tour videos that people had taken in and around Honolulu. I was shocked at how old, outdated, and rundown it looked. It really looked like a dump, and nothing at all like the tropical paradise that people envision. It was just another decrepit lib-run city.