The total population of Hawaii, according to the 1960 census, was only 632,772. The population of Honolulu was a bit less than 300,000. This is was not New York or Los Angeles or Chicago. The bureaucracy in a smaller city could not have been as cumbersome as you imagine it to have been.
My township has 5000 people. It took months to get a simple shed permit approved. Bureaucracy is bureaucracy.