The Kalapana, Hawaii earthquake of November 1975 had a rupture length of 40 to 50 km and was located on the south flank of the active volcano Kilauea. The source mechanism was dip slip normal faulting on a plane dipping ~20 degrees to the SE, with the greatest principal stress oriented in that direction and accumulated by volcanic intrusions into Kilauea's rifts. The source area of the 1975 earthquake was subject to intensive geological and geophysical research for many years before this earthquake because of its proximity to the volcano. We studied the distribution of epicenters for small earthquakes from 1962 to 1975. Seven seismographs located within 3 km of the aftershock area had been in operation for 3 to 10 years before the mainshock, and geodetic triangluations and trilaterations in the source area had been carried out repeatedly since 1914. We found that precursory changes occurred throughout most of the rupture area but in two distinctly different patterns. In the larger outer anomalous area that seismicity rate was decreased by 50% during the 3.8 years before the mainshock; in addition, several geodetic lines indicated anomalous strain release during this time. Within two inner areas the seismicity remained high, then increased shortly before the mainshock. In one of the inner areas a P wave travel time delay of 0.2 s could be detected, which began about 3.5 years before the mainshock. Within the other inner anomalous area geodetic strain was accumulated until the first half of 1975 when 3.5¿10-4 strain (35 bars), was released aseismically. By contrast, the outer anomalous volume, was experiencing strain softening from 1970/1971 on. We interpret these observations as indicating that strain softening by fault creep in the outer anomalous area transferred stress into two major asperities (locked portions of the fault). A velocity decrease and foreshocks were observed in one asperity and high stress accumulation in the other, implying that dilatancy of the crust probably occurred. Our model is qualitatively supported by the independent evidence of strong motion records which show that the Kalapana earthquake was a complex multiple rupture. We conclude that the Kalapana earthquake was preceded by a preparatory process which lasted 3.8¿0.3 years and which had dimensions of 45¿10 km covering approximately the aftershock area.