Lahaina—1947 to 1950
Hawai’i Pono’i
When we first moved to Lahaina we lived in a small two-bedroom house on Front Street directly overlooking the ocean. The island of Lanai lay directly across from our house, separated only by the Au-Au Channel, giving us a fantastic view of it. To the right we could look out on the vast sea beyond and the mysterious island of Molokai far in the distance. I don’t remember living in that house for very long. I do remember that Lahaina was much hotter and drier than Kauai. The weather in our new location seemed to agree with me, and I was thrilled that there were so many more new things for me to explore. I quickly decided that I was going to be very happy there.
Since the ocean was virtually on our back doorstep, I began spending more and more time in the water. The water was usually very calm, with quiet rolling waves that seemed to lap onto the shore. It was pretty shallow around where we lived, and there were a lot of rocks and pebbles that I could build imaginary things with.
At the crack of dawn, I would get up, dress myself, and walk along the shore when no one else was around to see what treasures the tide had washed in the previous night. Inevitably, I would find all kinds of fascinating things to bring back home with me.
Eventually Dr. Dunn, the old retiring doctor that my stepfather had come to replace, moved out of his big plantation house farther down on Front Street and we moved in.
Our new house, painted a plantation green color like the dispensary, was much larger. It had polished wooden floors, which were covered in the living room by large lauhala mats, three large bedrooms on one side of the house, two bathrooms, a large living room and separate dining room, and a small narrow pantry that led to a fairly good-sized and well-equipped kitchen, with a modern stove and an old icebox that took large blocks of ice that were delivered daily by the Lahaina Ice Company.
The backyard was huge and sported a vast, immaculately manicured grass lawn bordered by a small grove of banana trees that hid an acre or so of fairly dense jungle. A pathway led through the jungle surrounded by more banana trees as well as avocado trees, coconut trees, mango trees, and tropical flora and fauna.
There were also lizards, centipedes, and spiders. Bites from the black widow spiders, I was told, were poisonous, and the centipede bites were dangerous as well, so they were to be avoided at all costs. So I learned very early on that one had to be careful in the jungle.
There was also a small wooden cottage in the backyard. No one lived in it, so I decided to look into it. Much to my surprise, I found that the door was unlocked and when I opened it I was assailed by the musty smell of glue and old paper.
My curiosity aroused, I went in and was suddenly overwhelmed with what lay before my eyes. Heaped on the floor and stacked against all four of the walls were piles and piles of dusty, old hardbound books. It was a huge and wonderful hoard.
I had never seen so many books in all my life. I felt as if I had discovered a genuine treasure trove, and I sat down and slowly began examining the books. They were all grown-up books, not children’s books, although many of them contained illustrations. It was a truly remarkable discovery and I greedily took possession of this newly found treasure.
Day after day I would go into the little cottage and look through my new treasure trove. The bindings on many of the books were beautiful. Some were elaborately embossed in gold and silver. Some were bound in leather. I was somewhat dismayed to find that they all contained far too advanced reading for a child of my age, but that didn’t stop me from appreciating what they were.
There were probably well over a thousand books in that little hut. Most of these books were literature, and they included complete multivolume sets as well as single volumes. Even though I felt guilty about it, I didn’t tell my parents about this secret treasure because I was afraid that if I did I would probably lose it.
Of course, I did eventually lose it. A treasure like this was indeed way too good to be true. After about a week or so passed, Dr. Dunn’s daughter, who I later learned was an English teacher, came by with a truck and driver to collect her books.
I was totally heartbroken and she could see that I was. She said she’d had to leave them because she had no way of moving them until now. She told me that she needed the books for her work so that I could understand why she was taking them, but I still couldn’t help but lament the loss.
She must have realized how disappointed I was, because before she left she gave me one of her books, telling me that I might like this one. It was a thick old book, but its condition was as if it had hardly been read.
Bound in red cloth stamped in gold with a stylized picture of a knight astride a horse, it was titled Men of Iron by Howard Pyle. I treasured this old book even though it was still far too advanced for a five-year-old child. It was the first real adult book that I had ever owned, and I kept it by my bedside.
Not long after we had moved to the large house on Front Street, my parents hired a young Japanese-American woman named Sakae Nishijima to help with the housework, cook our meals, and assist my mother in looking after Valerie. My parents called her by her Japanese first name, Sakae, so I did too. Sakae’s English name was Violet. Fortunately, Sakae was a very happy, easygoing person so she didn’t mind a child like me calling her by her Japanese first name.
Sakae had four children; a daughter my age named Amy and three younger sons, Wayne, Ronnie, and Kent. We all managed to get along very well. Sakae’s husband Kiden, like my father, worked for the local sugarcane plantation, the Pioneer Mill Company.
My dad was a Methodist, and even though my mother was Presbyterian and I had been baptized as such, for the sake of convenience, I suppose, we all attended the old Methodist Church on Front Street. But the Nishijimas practiced a much more democratic form of religious freedom. Kiden was Buddhist and a member of the Jodo-shu sect, so he attended the Jodo Temple near Mala Wharf. Sakae was also Buddhist but she was a member of the Hongwanji sect, so she went to the Hongwanji Temple near the center of town. Amy was a Christian and she attended the same Methodist Church that we went to.
Sometimes, when my parents went out of town for a weekend to go shopping in Honolulu, Valerie and I got to stay at the Nishijima’s house. They had a nice little four-bedroom house in a newly developed area on a hill that was almost on the outskirts of Lahaina. In the back there was a two-story building with a large apartment on top where Kiden’s parents lived. There was also a garden where they grew vegetables and a pigpen way in the back.
Visiting the Nishijimas was always a treat for me because, for one thing, I got to eat real Japanese food as well as all kinds of local Hawaiian dishes. Although Sakae cooked at our house, she never prepared the local dishes—she only cooked the kind of food that my dad liked to eat. It was there where I had first tried takuwan, a Japanese pickled yellow daikon radish usually eaten with rice. It became one of my favorite things to eat. Sakae also made a purple eggplant pickle that was also delicious when eaten with hot steamed rice. Once, when Kiden had some friends over for a luau, I watched as he and some of his buddies killed a pig.
This turned out to be quite an eye-opening experience for me. I had always taken meat pretty much for granted. I knew that the steaks my dad and I enjoyed so much came from a cow and that bacon and pork chops came from a pig, but I had no idea what it took to get these things on our dining table. It had never really occurred to me before—although, of course I’m sure that in the back of my mind I realized it—that these animals had to be slaughtered and dissected before they became our dinner.
The pig that was slaughtered wasn’t cute like Porky Pig. Instead, it was a large, somewhat scary animal. Several of Kiden’s friends helped him hoist up the loudly squealing and struggling pig, and as it hung in the air, one of the men plunged a huge knife into it, causing blood to spray all over. The pig squealed even more as it thrashed around wildly and shit all over the place. Blood spurted from the widening wound, drenching the heavy butcher’s aprons of the men who were standing nearby.
Quite unlike what I had expected, it seemed as if it took an eternity for the animal to die. I looked around at the other kids who were also watching. Most of them were just laughing and playing as if the slaughter was no big thing. And then I realized that to them it wasn’t, because, unlike me, they had all seen this done before. Gradually the pig’s cries and squeals died down and its thrashing became less violent and the blood which had been pouring into the pan beneath it in a steady stream slowed to a thin trickle. Apparently they were saving the pig’s blood for something. I wondered what but didn’t ask. The nauseating smell of the pig blood cooking on my grandmother’s stove is still vivid in my mind.
When the pig was finally dead, the men washed the blood and feces off of it with a garden hose before cutting it open and removing the intestines and other organs. Then they cleaned the pig thoroughly and took it down. They laid it on a large, clean cloth and patted it dry.
Nearby was a freshly dug pit where a wood fire had been heating lava rocks all day. The men placed fresh ti leaves over the hot rocks and put some of the hot rocks into the body cavity of the pig before they lowered the whole pig into the pit. They put more ti leaves over the pig, covered that with a wet tarp, and then shoveled the dirt back over that. For the rest of the day the pig cooked Hawaiian-style, in the underground pit oven, or imu as it was called.
In the meantime, the women had washed and cooked the pig trimmings and these were eventually brought out in bowls and small dishes and served as pupus, or snacks, to the hardworking men, who happily enjoyed eating them while drinking their beer. While the men were busy, I managed to steal a Lucky Lager beer out of the metal washtub and sneak out back behind the pigpen to drink it.
The beer tasted terrible but went down surprisingly easy, leaving me with a warm, very pleasant glow. It only took that one beer and for the rest of the day I was gliding around feeling absolutely no pain. When evening rolled around and the pig was ready, the men opened the pit and removed the carcass, and everyone settled down to a huge feast. The kalua pig was succulent and delicious, one of the best in my memory that I have ever had the pleasure of eating.
When we moved to Lahaina I was too still young to enter kindergarten, so I initially attended a kind of preschool class. It was here that I first got to know a few of the kids who would be in my class when I went to public school.
I started kindergarten in the fall of 1948. I was five years old and it was at that time when I fell hopelessly in love with my beautiful kindergarten teacher, Miss Nordman. At least I remember her being beautiful. And sweet, she was so very sweet and patient and kind. She was a sort of dishwater blonde in her early twenties, and she had a very light complexion and wore thick horn-rimmed glasses.
Because I not only knew my ABCs but was already able to write actual words and even sentences, albeit very simple ones, I became quite popular with my classmates, who would ask me to print out their name at the top of their school papers. Of course, my handwriting was still large and somewhat tentative, but I enjoyed doing this. It didn’t make me feel superior in any way, but it made me feel as if my classmates liked me. In return for helping them with writing, they would teach me how to say words in pidgin English.
Miss Nordman spoke English in the proper manner, the way I had been brought up to speak it. With her there, I didn’t feel like I was out of place from the other kids, even the haole kids who were much more proficient at speaking pidgin English than I was at the time.
I had been too young to let this bother me in Hanalei, but now it made me feel like somewhat of an outsider. Fortunately, I was a quick learner and managed to master pidgin English relatively quickly, much to the chagrin of my mother, who steadfastly refused to allow me to speak it at home.
I countered by saying, “Even the haole kids here speak pidgin, Mom.”
But she said that only people brought up poor spoke like that and that I, of all people, should at least know better. But I knew I would continue to be unpopular if I didn’t adapt. I worked out a compromise where I spoke pidgin to my friends—when my mother wasn’t around—and was careful never to utter a word of it in her presence.
A few months after I started kindergarten, Grandmother Chinn flew over to visit us in Lahaina and spend the Christmas holiday with us. It was simply wonderful seeing her again. I had missed her a lot, and she told me that she had missed me too. My grandmother had timed her vacation so that she could be with my mother when the new baby would be born. I had watched my mother’s tummy grow bigger and bigger as the months passed, and I was looking forward to the coming event with great anticipation.
In December 1948, my sister Stephanie was born. She was such a cute little thing that we all immediately fell in love with her. I also had decided to become very protective of her. She appeared to be so very small and delicate but she was always smiling and laughing, a really happy little baby. Although Valerie was much younger than I was, she had always been somewhat bold and independent, and in this respect she seemed more like a friend than a helpless little baby sister.
On the other hand, little Stevie, as we called her, was so helpless that you simply wanted to hold her and take care of her. For the first time I really did feel like a big brother—I suppose now that I was a little older I had formed some kind of an idea of what a big brother actually was.
Strangely enough, Valerie must have felt the same way because she loved holding her and taking care of her too. I think she now realized that she had become a big sister and she was somewhat proud of that fact.
After school, much of my time was spent exploring Lahaina. Looking back, it seemed as if it were a much bigger town back then, filled with a seemingly endless supply of strange and mysterious places, although now I realize that what I remembered was only just a relatively small town seen through the eyes of a small child.
I got to know an old Chinese man with a large, pronounced goiter who owned the little old grocery store on the other side of the Moalii Bridge over the Kapalu stream, between Mala Wharf and the Baldwin Packers cannery. Behind his store was the site of the ancient Luakona heiau, or sacred place. This place was kapu, forbidden, so we were supposed to keep our distance from it or something inexplicably bad was bound to happen to us. This old Chinese store owner would buy the large avocados that I picked from the grove of trees in the jungle behind our house, always paying me in cash money.
In Lahaina, there was a large dry goods emporium that sold Japanese goods such as the traditional home altars known as butsudans along with the dry goods, furniture, and home décor items such as large hand-painted scrolls, all of which had been imported from Japan.
One scroll that caught my eye depicted a fierce samurai warrior in full battle regalia, painted in garish, eye-catching colors. Day after day I came to take a look at that scroll, which was about five feet in height and two feet across. I could imagine it hanging on the wall in my bedroom.
One day I accompanied my mother to the dry goods emporium. I took this opportunity to show her the samurai warrior scroll and then asked her if she would buy it for me. She gave the price tag a long hard look and gave a resounding no. I pleaded with her. I told her I would go to work and pay her back.
When this didn’t seem to sway her, I continued pleading, hoping that I would eventually wear her down. When she finally gave in, telling me firmly that I was not to tell my dad what it cost, I could see the unrestrained look of relief on the shopkeeper’s face. Now he wouldn’t have to put up with this little kid coming into his shop every day to window-shop without buying anything.
Aside from phonograph records and picture scrolls depicting fierce samurai warriors, my next great passion was for the movies. I can’t remember much about that first movie I had ever seen while on board the SS Matsonia en route to Hawaii at the age of three. But I vividly remember the traveling picture show man stopping in the little village of Hanalei every week with his portable projector and screen, which he set up in the community center building.
Those showings were always jam-packed with people and the entire larger room of that community center was always overflowing with virtually the whole village. In fact, people would stand or sit outside and look in through the windows and doors. The show itself would begin with a cartoon and progress to a serial chapter before the main feature, which was usually some kind of B-Western or horror film.
But the part of the show that really captured my young imagination back then was the weekly serial chapter. I can’t recall the titles I saw at that very early age, but I do remember the serial chapters with their incessant pounding of jungle drums and dangerous voodoo spells and, of course, the cliffhanger endings which made us all eagerly anticipate the show the following week. But everything was made much scarier, especially after seeing a horror film, by the close proximity of the graveyard, which we had to walk through on our way home after the show.
In Lahaina, it was the longer feature-length movies that would become my primary interest. I still enjoyed watching the serials, the cartoons, and the comedy shorts, but not quite as much as before. My tastes were finally beginning to evolve, although I suppose I wasn’t aware at the time.
The Pioneer Theatre was housed in an old, large, two-story wooden building adjacent to the Pioneer Hotel. The management of the Pioneer Theatre used to mimeograph a monthly listing of all the films that would be showing there, and this list was religiously posted for the public to see throughout town.
I would look forward to the weekend shows with great anticipation. I made it an almost daily habit to study the large, colorful posters tacked up on the walls outside the old wooden theater on my way home from school. Fortunately, my parents also liked going to the movies, and we usually went once or twice during the weekend, depending, of course, on what was showing.
My father particularly liked the Westerns, such as Winchester 73, Broken Arrow, Rio Grande, and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon—just about anything with James Stewart, John Wayne, Randolph Scott, or Joel McCrea in it. He also liked the Tarzan movies, but he would always say that Johnny Weissmuller was a much better Tarzan than Lex Barker, who was the current Tarzan at the time.
My mother preferred the dramas, like The Miniver Story, A Letter to Three Wives, The African Queen, All the King’s Men, and The Heiress, as well as musicals like An American in Paris, Annie Get Your Gun, The Great Caruso, Singin’ in the Rain, and those insipid old-fashioned Americana Doris Day/Gordon MacRae movies such as By the Light of the Silvery Moon and On Moonlight Bay.
As for myself, I tended to like them all, but I especially remember young Bobby Driscoll in Song of the South, Treasure Island, So Dear to My Heart, and a particularly scary film called The Window. As a kid I really enjoyed the pirate movies like Treasure Island and Anne of the Indies, as well as exciting historical sea adventures like Captain Horatio Hornblower.
But I also liked movies with exotic African settings such as King Solomon’s Mines, or period adventure films such as The Black Rose, or dramas like Sunset Boulevard, musicals with catchy tunes such as Anchors Aweigh, or end-of-the-world thrillers like When Worlds Collide. I remember being scared to death by the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz.
The films that fascinated me the most were the dark and gritty postwar crime dramas known as film noir. I remember being impressed by Jules Dassin’s Night and the City, Henry Hathaway’s Kiss of Death, Robert Wise’s The Set Up, and especially John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle and Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole. The realism of these films provided a sharp contrast to most of the colorful and unreal entertainment fare that my parents usually preferred to see.
Of course I didn’t know anything about movie directors at the time, and naturally, being a child, I couldn’t fully comprehend everything that was going on. But I knew that I liked films. I also liked the way the actors performed in them. It was a much more natural and realistic style of acting, I thought.
Although it was far from being the entertainment capital of the world, there were still the two theaters to provide me with entertainment in Lahaina: the Pioneer Theatre and the Queen Theatre. The former showed first-run Hollywood movies, mostly by Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Brothers, and the other large studios, and the latter showed mostly low-budget B-movies from the independent Hollywood companies and second-run double features. On Mondays it showed Filipino films and on Tuesdays its fare was devoted to Japanese films. I would stand in front of the theater and study the exotic posters for these ethnic films. I was fascinated by them even though they were in a language that I could not read.
Unfortunately, these films did not have English subtitles. There were still a lot of plantation laborers who spoke Filipino, and there was a large population in Lahaina that spoke and understood Japanese. Strangely enough, neither theater showed Chinese movies in spite of the fact that Lahaina did have a significant Chinese population.
My parents preferred going to the Pioneer Theatre, so as a family we never went to the Queen Theatre, which my Dad called a “flea pit.” So if something was playing at the Queen Theatre that I simply just had to see, I would have to sneak off all by myself, or occasionally with one of my friends if I could talk him into going with me. For some reason, though, I preferred to watch movies by myself, free from the noisy distraction of chattering friends.
When I was in the first grade at Kamehameha III School in Lahaina, we began the school day by first saying the Pledge of Allegiance and then we all would sing Hawai’i Pono’i, the Hawaiian national anthem, written by King David Kalakaua. In spite of the fact that the words were in Hawaiian, they were very easy to memorize and learn. Here are the words—the English translation is in brackets:
Hawai’I pono’i [Hawaii’s own true sons]
Nana I kou mo’i [Be loyal to your chief]
Kalani ali’i, ke ali’ [Your country’s liege and lord the Chief]
Makua lani e [Royal father]
Kamehameha e [Kamehameha]
Na kaua e pale [Who defended in war]
Me ka ih [With spears]
Hawaii was still a territory at that time. Statehood would not come until many years later. My first and second grade teacher was the renowned Hawaiian musicologist and hula dance teacher Emma Sharpe. She was one of Maui’s legendary kumu hulas or hula masters, a truly exalted position to the Hawaiians.
Thinking back on it now, that’s probably why we learned to sing Hawai’i Pono’i—to give us some kind of insight into the Hawaiian cultural heritage that Mrs. Sharpe was so proud of.