Newswatch
By Star-Bulletin Staff
Saturday, July 4, 1998
Newswatch
By Star-Bulletin Staff
Saturday, July 4, 1998
He had just been given the task of planning the first national convention of Japanese-American World War II veterans, and the three major facilities in Honolulu that could host a crowd of more than 3,000 -- the Neal Blaisdell Center, Sheraton-Waikiki Hotel and the Hilton Hawaiian Village -- were booked and unavailable.
"Out of the blue," said Koga, whose father, Smitty, served with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, "someone from the Hawaii Visitors Bureau called and asked us if we wanted to rent the convention center. It was real chicken skin. I didn't know anyone knew we had a booking problem.
"We went over to the site and walked through the convention center, which was still under construction, and all I could think was, wow."
For the past two weeks, Koga said, he has averaged "only five hours of sleep a night" as he and other members of the Sons and Daughters chapters of the Oahu AJA Veterans Council planned the first reunion of the four nisei World War II units.
In the past, the 442nd RCT, the 100th Battalion, the Military Intelligence Service, and the 1399th Engineer Construction Battalion have held separate reunions.
Koga said no one from the Hawaii Convention Center ever mentioned it, but he believes the AJA veterans were asked to be the first organization to use the Kapiolani Boulevard facility shortly after its June 11 opening because of their place in history.
"The motive for both us and the state in using this facility was to pay honor to the veterans and have a big opening event for the center," Koga said. "It was something historical they can later relate to, although that was never said."
It also will be the first major test of the center's traffic control system, which has been a source of controversy since the facility was proposed and built.
More than 3,000 nisei veterans and their families were to assembly in the center's exhibition hall today for a luncheon banquet honoring the exploits of the World War II soldiers who served in every capacity, and whose units, the 442nd RCT and the 100th Battalion, became the most decorated.
With parking at a premium at the convention center, which has only 700 parking stalls, planners found another 440 spaces at nearby hotels and office buildings and presold them as part of the registration process.
On top of that, buses were to be used to shuttle the AJA veterans and their families from their hotels and from one activity to another. These include the dedica-blrb Tonight's Fourth of July festivities at Schofield Barracks will feature a salute.tion of the "Brothers in Valor" memorial -- the first monument honoring the four units -- this morning at Fort DeRussy, and tonight's Fourth of July festivities at Schofield Barracks, which also will feature a salute to the nisei veterans.
"My worst nightmare is rain at Punchbowl tomorrow," said Koga, referring to the veterans' annual ceremony honoring their fallen comrades at the National Cemetery of the Pacific. With more than 3,000 people planning to attend the 9 a.m. memorial service, cemetery officials have closed the facility to the public for safety reasons.
All of the AJA veterans were to receive a special tribute at today's banquet. Each was to be given an orange yarn lei sewn by a team of volunteers led by Carol Sullivan, whose father, Yaso Abe, was a member of the 442nd RCT.
Koga estimated that it cost his organization more than $85,000 to host the convention.
The Sons and Daughters organization held seminars and workshops yesterday to foster ways of perpetuating the memory of their parents' wartime experiences.
Alan Yoshitomi and Alan and Sharlene Miyamura explained in their oral history sessions that it has taken them since 1993 to videotape the experiences of 132 veterans. "We are here to help train people who are interested so they don't have to reinvent the wheel," Alan Miyamura said.
"Time is running out," added his wife, Sharlene. "It's a war against time."
Ironically, none of the three have parents who were AJA veterans, but all of them were drawn to the project because they wanted to preserve the values of these veterans.
"This thing is not for us," Alan Miyamura said. "It's for future generations. . . . As sanseis (third-generation Japanese Americans), we benefited from their sacrifices. It's a way to pay them back for paving the way for us."
They battled the Germans, but also hatred and racial prejudice in their own country, where they were considered "enemy aliens."
By the close of World War II, these 8,000-plus second-generation Japanese Americans had won 18,142 decorations for valor, making the 100th Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team "the most decorated unit for its size and length of service in the history of the United States."
They were even made honorary Texans in appreciation from the soldiers of the "Lost Battalion," the 36th Division from Texas, whom they rescued in 1944 in the Vosges Mountains of France.
Following the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, many of the Japanese Americans in uniform were disarmed and assigned to menial labor.
But local pressure forced the Army to reverse its position, and the 100th Battalion -- "One Puka Puka" -- was born on June 12, 1942. Some 1,300 soldiers were shipped to Oakland, Calif., and trucked to Camp McCoy, Wis., for training and later Camp Shelby, Miss.
On Feb. 1, 1943, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team was activated. Its ranks were filled with more than 2,500 Japanese Americans from Hawaii, and 1,300 from mainland internment camps.
The 100th Battalion was the first to feel the enemy's wrath: at the beaches of Salerno, Italy, on Sept. 22, 1943, and later at Volturno, Cassino and Anzio. It gained the reputation of a fierce combat unit with more than 1,000 of its soldiers wounded in battle, earning the nickname the "Purple Heart Battalion."
On June 10, 1944, the 100th Battalion was attached to the 442nd RCT, and went to battle in Italy, then southern France.
By October 1944, the 442nd RCT had moved up the Rhone Valley to Epinal, where it liberated the towns of Biffontaine and Bruyeres.
It then was called on to break the Germans' stranglehold on the "Lost Battalion," which had been cut off for almost a week, and was low on food and ammunition.
At the end of the battle, the 442nd/100th had lost 200 men and another 600 lay wounded. The total casualties exceeded the number of soldiers from the Texas battalion they had saved.
After a short rest in southern France, Gen. Mark Clark requested the 442nd/100th return to Italy in March 1945 for a supposed diversionary assault on what the Germans believed impenetrable: a series of mountain fortifications in the Apennines Mountains called the Gothic Line. But the tactic surprised the Germans, and the 442nd/100th destroyed the Line's western sector.
Army records show the 442nd/
100th suffered 9,486 casualties, with 650 soldiers killed in action. It was awarded one Medal of Honor, 52 Distinguished Service Crosses, one Distinguished Service Medal, 560 Silver Stars plus 28 Oak Leaf Clusters, 22 Legions of Merits, 15 Soldiers Medals, 4,000 Bronze with 1,200 Oak Leaf Clusters and 9,468 Purple Hearts.
Perhaps the least-known AJA unit was the 1,399th Engineer Construction Battalion, which didn't come under fire during World War II because all of its "Pineapple Soldiers" were kept here building jungle warfare training centers, water systems, roads and warehouses.
At the end of the war in 1945, the unit was awarded the Army's Meritorious Service Award for building an airstrip at Kahuku for large bombers, a Halawa rock quarry, a Coconut Island recreation facility and a 1 million-gallon water tank in Wahiawa.
Created in 1944, the battalion eventually completed 54 projects. On several occasions, requests to send the unit to the Philippines to join Gen. Douglas MacArthur were rejected because of concerns over sending Japanese Americans into
blrb The 100th Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team is the most decorated unit for its size and length of service in U.S. history.an Asian combat zone.
More than 1,000 niseis were believed to have served in the 1,399th.
From 1941 through 1945, 6,000 Japanese Americans served in the Pacific theater and other areas as linguists, interpreters and translators -- as part of the Military Intelligence Service.
From the Japanese invasion of Alaska in June 1942, through the Allied island-hopping campaigns in the Pacific, to the battle for Okinawa in 1945, the nisei linguists distinguished themselves.
Much of their work was classified. Working in small teams and attached to different branches of the service, the MIS soldiers became the "eyes and ears" of every Pacific Command.
Maj. Gen. Charles Willoughby, intelligence chief of staff for Gen. Douglas MacArthur, said, "The nisei saved countless Allied lives and shortened the war by two years."
The first MIS Language School began in an abandoned aircraft hangar at San Francisco's Presidio on Nov. 1, 1941, producing the first niseis to enter World War II combat in May 1942, preceding the 100th Battalion by nearly a year. The school later moved to Minnesota.
By May 1944 there were more than 6,000 graduates, about half from Hawaii.
The language school later provided linguists for the U.S. occupation of Japan. Since renamed the Defense Language Institute, the school now teaches 23 languages and works out of campuses in Monterey, Calif.
The MIS' exploits -- uncovered after the war -- included translation of a document retrieved from a beach in Tulagi, across the channel from Guadalcanal, which revealed the call sign and code names for every warship in the Japanese fleet, as well as the call sign of each naval air squadron and air station.
On April 18, 1943, Harold Fudenna, stationed in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, intercepted a radio message detailing the arrival in Bougainville of Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, chief of the Japanese Naval Fleet and architect of the Pearl Harbor attack. Using that message, U.S. P-38s from Guadalcanal intercepted and shot down Yamamoto's plane over the Solomon Islands.
Nisei linguists also translated Japanese documents known as the "Z Plan," which contained Japan's counterattack strategy in the Central Pacific.
This led to Allied victories at "The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot" and the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines.
Deciphering messages and documents wasn't the nisei soldiers' only task: They also helped coax Japanese soldiers and civilians out of caves on Saipan and Okinawa.
That's the stand being taken by property owners and management organizations that are angered by a city plan to freeze property assessments over the next three years.
Critics say the proposal is bothersome particularly because the city raised tax rates for most property tax categories effective July 1 as a way to offset the effects of declining property values.
Budget Director Malcolm Tom acknowledged that rates were adjusted this year to keep falling property assessments from affecting the city's coffers.
But he stressed that the changes made to the tax structure are "revenue neutral" and only ensure that the city does not take in less money than it has been.
"We've adjusted the rates to generate the same level of revenues that the city received last year," Tom said.
Jay Fidell, a board member with the Building Owners and Managers Association, says that's not the point.
"The city's revenues are not relevant to the proper assessment of real property taxes," Fidell said. "Real property assessments should be a function of the value of property, not of the city's needs for funds.
"If the city has budget problems, it should resolve them by reducing its own expenses."
His group and four other organizations are holding a news conference Tuesday to highlight their concerns.
The other organizations are the Hawaii chapters of the Institute of Real Estate Management, the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties, the International Council of Shopping Centers and the Hawaii Council of Associations of Apartment Owners.
Their three key objections, listed in a prepared statement, are over:
The artificial inflation of property taxes during a recession when values are declining.
The taking away of taxpayers' rights to appeal during the second and third years of the freeze.
Increasing the cost of doing business for businesses and consumers during an economic slump.
A bill now before the City Council calls for assessed values to be updated only once every three years, as opposed to the current system of assessing values annually. Tom described the proposal as "a common-sense bill to improve government productivity and efficiency."
The bill "has nothing to do with how much one pays in property taxes," Tom said. "Whether this bill passes or fails, one's property taxes will be what the Council proposes them to be for a coming fiscal year."
Tom said that in "most states," property assessments are done once every two years or more.
Fidell said the city has seen an increase in the number of tax appeals filed in recent years, largely because assessments have either continued to climb or remained high even as independent appraisers have been valuing property at substantially lower prices.
If anything, he said, the real-estate community feels values will continue to decline, "that we haven't hit bottom."
Putting a freeze on assessments only increases the likelihood that property owners would want to appeal, he said.
Jane Sugimura, president of the Hawaii Council of Associations of Apartment Owners, said neither condominium prices nor rents have been going up.
"The assessments are still high, and the fact that they may be set for three years at this level really makes people concerned," she said.
"And with condo people right now, there are a myriad of other problems," Sugimura said. "The buildings are older, so maintenance fees are going up. Foreclosures are affecting the cash flow into the associations so that you have apartment owners subsidizing those who are defaulting."
Fidell said it's not just property owners who are affected.
Higher costs are passed on to tenants, and then -- with commercial or business tenants -- to customers.
"It was a wasted death," Gilbert's cousin, Leland Shapiro, said in a telephone interview yesterday from Simi Valley, Calif. "He was the patriarch of our family, and we were looking forward to many more happy years with him."
Shapiro and 13 other relatives from California attended a party Sunday at the Waikiki Yacht Club in honor of Gilbert's first grandchild, who was born in May.
"We have pictures of him holding his granddaughter, looking so proud and happy," said Shapiro, a professor of veterinary and animal science at Los Angeles Pierce College.
The family was planning a mainland get-together in October to celebrate Gilbert's 70th birthday, Shapiro says.
Gilbert was killed two days after the party in his Waikiki Whaler apartment building office at 232 Kaiulani Ave.
Police have made no arrests.
"We are pursuing several leads and are awaiting forensic analysis of evidence recovered at the scene," homicide Detective Allan Castro said.
Shapiro cannot understand why anyone would want to kill his cousin.
"He wasn't a challenging or aggressive person," Shapiro said. "He was a very compassionate, giving man who helped me out over the years.
"He let rent slide a little when people had a hard time paying. That's the thing about him: He dealt with people as people, not objects."
Fred Gilbert, who discovered his brother's body, declined comment.
Services are pending.
The Kaiser Permanente manager of public, government and community affairs will be attending a reunion of cancer survivors at the City of Hope Cancer Center.
"Some patients come back year after year after year," he said. "They give them buttons to indicate how many years they've survived. I'll be a 1-year-old."
Pablo's wife, Sandy, and bone-marrow donor Roger Ariola of Kauai also are going to the annual "Celebration of Life."
Pablo underwent a bone-marrow transplant at the City of Hope Cancer Center in November 1996. He left in March last year.
He met his donor last December at a Hawaii Bone Marrow Donor Registry luncheon. Ariola told Pablo that he was just a "messenger" from God in providing themr6 Chris
Pablo lifesaving marrow.
Pablo said he's doing fine, although he's "still a little fatigued from time to time."
"It probably comes from working too hard," he added. But he said he was happy to be back at his job, especially during the legislative session. He worked hard on three significant bills that passed, he said.
Pablo will be one of the reunion speakers, and said he'll let his emotions and environment shape his remarks. Just driving to the campus in June for a checkup brought tears to his eyes, he said. "It was very positive for me to be there."
He said he'll visit staff members and two Hawaii patients in recovery there.
The day after the reunion, he and Ariola will participate in a bone-marrow donor drive targeting multiethnic groups in Carson, Calif. A lot of Hawaii people settle in the area, he said.
Pablo was especially grateful to Ariola because there are few Filipino bone-marrow donors. He has helped to organize marrow registration drives to encourage donors, particularly among different ethnic backgrounds.
Pablo and Ariola were featured on a videotape made in March by the City of Hope for national distribution.
"I'm kind of a poster boy," Pablo laughed.
"It really shocked me because the woman who baby-sat him, she's really a sweet lady, and he really loved it there," said Akana.
Akana said that about three years ago, when her 1-1/2-year-old son was watched there, a woman took care of about five to six children, most of them toddlers.
The house, about a half mile from Radford High School, is in a subdivision in Foster Village built more than 30 years ago. It is an area where most residents are homeowners, and neatly trimmed hedges line the sidewalks fronting houses.
According to the state Narcotics Enforcement Division, the woman was unaware of the storage of a date-rape drug in a water dispenser in the kitchen.
Charged with first-degree promotion of a dangerous drug and manufacturing gamma hydroxybutyrate is 45-year-old Stevan Eberhardt, who also lived at the residence at 1386 Olino St.
Neighbors say they were surprised when law enforcement officers raided the house and arrested Eberhardt on Thursday.
"This is a peaceful place. We never have any problems," said John T. Silva, a resident.
Silva said he was shocked about the location of the drugs near the children. He said he moved to Foster Village to get his children away from a high drug-crime area in Ewa.
"It's like wherever you go, there's a problem," Silva said.
Robert Kilthau, the Foster Village neighborhood watch coordinator, said the community has had only one other drug raid at a house, about a year ago.
A retired businessman and member of the state Board of Education, Brodie was co-chairman of Mayor Jeremy Harris' campaign. Takahashi is Harris' appointed deputy budget director.
Brodie was elected unanimously by the 13-member panel on Thursday. Takahashi was accepted after being assigned to the commission position by Harris.
Commission member Darolyn Lendio, a former Harris cabinet appointee, told her colleagues it would be prudent to accept the mayor's recommendation "given our very limited budget and the time we have."
The selections drew criticism from Lynne Matusow, vice chairwoman of the Downtown Neighborhood Board.
She said placing Brodie and Takahashi in top spots implies that "there's no independence."
Matusow noted that the last commission, which convened in 1991, hired a person from outside government to be its executive director.
Edward Hirata, a former city managing director, was chosen vice chairman. Charlie Rodgers, a labor union official and chairman of the city Planning Commission, was selected treasurer.
ip,,,.8Sixty-five teachers from Hawaii attending the National Education Association's 77th Representative Assembly in New Orleans will vote for the unification.
Karen Ginoza, incoming president of the Hawaii State Teachers Association, said the merger would have little impact on Hawaii teachers since there is no active American Federation of Teachers affiliate here.
But "the merger is yet another opportunity to improve conditions, standards and educational reform for classrooms by giving our nation's educators a unified voice," she said.
If the merger is approved by a two-thirds vote, the new organization will take effect gradually over a period of two years.
The decision the HSTA board will have to make then is whether to join the state Federation of Labor here.
The American Federation of Teachers is an AFL-CIO affiliate.
Gee will direct both sections as the Travel Industry Management School is absorbed by the college.
Gee has been with TIM for more than 30 years, serving as dean for two decades.
He has held teaching and advisory positions at Oregon State, the University of Denver, Nankai University, Beijing Tourism College, the Shanghai Institute of Tourism and the Hong Kong Vocational Training Center.
Gee was appointed to the U.S. Commerce Department's Travel and Tourism Advisory Board during the Carter, Reagan and Bush administrations.
He currently serves as an adviser to China's tourism industry.
The price for wholesalers and dealers went up from 4 cents per cigarette to 5 cents per cigarette on July 1.
Dealers and wholesalers of cigarettes to the military and other federal government retailers also will be subject to the state cigarette and tobacco tax beginning Sept. 1.
Since 1993, state law exempted dealers and wholesalers from paying both the general excise tax and tobacco tax on sales to the U.S. government.
The law originally was passed in anticipation of federal legislation that would have required military installations to purchase cigarettes from local dealers.
But the legislation did not become law.
The Legislature this year repealed the exemption.
The charity kicks off its annual school supply drive for needy children this weekend.
"Last year, the clearinghouse received and serviced nearly 14,000 requests," said Louise Funai, president of Helping Hands Hawaii, which administers the Community Clearing House program.
"Unfortunately, several hundred schoolchildren on Oahu were also turned away because of a shortage of supplies and resources."
Before 1997 the number of requests for school supply assistance ranged from 2,000 to 3,000 a year, she said.
U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye and his wife are honorary chairpersons for the drive.
Financial contributions to the project can be made payable to Ready to Learn, c/o Helping Hands Hawaii, 680 Iwilei Road, Suite 430, Honolulu 96817.
Donations also can be dropped off between July 25 and Aug. 24 at any First Hawaiian Bank branch.
A 24-year-old man was arrested and then released yesterday pending further investigation, police said.
On Thursday, 19-year-old Benito Peloli, of Vineyard Boulevard, and 18-year-old Julian Aponte, of Kuikui Street, were charged in connection with the armed robberies, which date back to March.
Police continue to hunt for one more suspect.
The injured man, 41, reportedly owed a friend of the suspect some money, police said.
The suspect then pistol-whipped the man at a Waipahu residence at 5 p.m.
During the incident, one round was accidentally discharged, but no one was hit by the bullet, police said.
The suspect remains at large, but his identity is known by police.
William Punohu was charged with first-degree burglary and is being held in lieu of $30,000.
Police said Punohu on Thursday reportedly broke into his girlfriend's Likini Street apartment through a window and then started slapping her.
The woman suffered a cut lip.
A student, Jeffrey Higa, 18, was charged Thursday with kidnapping and two counts of attempted first-degree sexual assault and is being held in lieu of $150,000 bail.
The girl was washing her hands in the restroom at about 10:30 a.m. when Higa, armed with a knife, grabbed her, according to police reports.
During the struggle, the girl received minor cuts to her upper chest. She was able to escape from him.
Higa was initially arrested for first-degree terroristic threatening, but after admitting to police he was trying to rape and sodomize the girl, he was then arrested for attempted sexual assault and kidnapping.
DOE spokesman Greg Knudsen said he didn't know all the facts in the case and that the incident is primarily the school's issue. Knudsen said the school will probably examine how it can prevent a similar incident from happening again.
School officials were not available for comment yesterday.
Adam has a history of disputes with people from neighboring Milolii village arising from his alleged destruction of archaeological sites several years ago.
He recently told the Star-Bulletin that he had received death threats.
His wife Gloria, 36, was reported missing since June 13 and has not been found.
In the latest case, Adam was charged with assault, reckless endangering, terroristic threatening and promoting a detrimental drug. In a search of his house, police found a 9 mm pistol and marijuana.
Adam is being held in lieu of $6,100 bail.
The operations in the Kau and South Kona districts took place Wednesday and Thursday. They also executed a search warrant at a Keopu, North Kona, home Wednesday but made no arrests.
Assistant Fire Chief Richard Fernandez said firefighters received the first alarm for a brush fire toward the top of Pulehu Road in Kula at about 5:17 p.m. yesterday.
He said as they were going toward the fire, they noticed five other fires on the side of the road.
Fernandez said firefighters were able to put out four fires quickly but had more difficulty with two others -- one that burned 10 acres and another, 25 acres of brush.
Firefighters were called at about 1 a.m. today to fight a fire in an abandoned sugar cane field that burned at estimated 50 acres.
The abandoned sugar cane field is part of the Maui Lani subdivision.
Fernandez said firefighters were still monitoring the brush fires and had contained the cane fire.
"It's sad. I feel for the community," said police Detective Tim Gapero.
Gapero said the suspect is possibly a neighbor of 43-year-old Keith Meyer, whose body was found in front of his garage at 99 Nolu Road.
Gapero said the shooting is believed to have taken place between 5:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Wednesday.
Gapero said he doesn't know the motive for the shooting.
