one story, told amongst boxes
She was only five years old so her memories are more muted than focused. Air raid sirens. Curtains drawn. “Don’t look out the window!” She peeks anyway and sees spotlights in the sky. Hears booming crashes. “Don’t go near the window!” The spotlights are still looking for stray planes. Chaos. She senses fear, but not her own. She is unafraid, only curious and small amidst what she would know later as the Pearl Harbor attack.
She is Japanese. Her grandparents moved to Hawai’i (many years before the attack) to raise their children and, then later, their grandchildren. She walked to Kalihi Union church with them every week. “It smelled like potato chips because the factory was right next door! Can you imagine? during worship? Smelling potato chips?” she laughs, “but we would always buy some on the walk home.” She played in the canal with her friends and walked to school, just like any other child in the 1940s.
But after the attack, her family was under scrutiny.
Her uncle, a teacher, ‘mysteriously’ left the profession after December 7th, 1941. No one in her family was sent to internment camps, thankfully, but they were no longer free. “They [soldiers] would come around to the houses,” she remembers, “and take everything Japanese, books, especially, and take them outside and throw them in the fire.” Her mother couldn’t bear to part with her Kimono, so they hid it, trembling.
Eighty-three years later she is moving to a new home and sorting through her belongings. Her life is peppered with many stories: tragic, joyful, everyday. She eventually married an American soldier and they made a life together. He’s gone now. Through all seasons, she remained steadfast in her faith, rooted deep, more than the fleeting crunch of a salty potato chip.
