Kokua Line
Kokua Line
IT turns out that the Ewa Elementary School dog tags issued to students in the late '50s and early '60s were not uncommon during that period of bomb shelters and school drills, where students practiced crouching under desks in case of a nuclear attack. Kids’ Cold War
dog tags were
common on OahuSeveral people called after an Ewa reader wondered, in the Nov. 21 column, whether other schools issued the metal ID tags.
The callers attended various elementary schools on Oahu -- including Wahiawa Elementary, Kaala Elementary, Helemano Elementary and St. Patrick's -- and even schools in Kansas and New York City.
Some, like Mike Mauricio and Michael Sawamoto, who both attended Ewa Elementary, Gary Momohara, who went to Liholiho Elementary in Kaimuki, and Rene Watanabe, who went to Jefferson School in Waikiki, still have their tags with six-digit phone numbers.
Momohara, who's now in mortgage servicing and likes to jog, wears his childhood tag as a means of identification even though he no longer lives in Kaimuki. He got his tag in the late '50s, as a first- or second-grader, he recalled.
Ceci Palmer, a communications specialist at Queen's Medical Center, remembers "drills where we had to hide under our desks and bring extra food in the event of a nuclear attack," when she attended Lincoln School in Makiki.
She she got her tag in Jean Kondo's sixth-grade class.
Mauricio, a carpenter, was in the fifth grade, in 1959-60, when he got his tag. "I had to go to the hospital and get a blood test," he said. "My blood type was Type A, which is on the tag."
Coincidentally, just a couple of days before the Kokua Line item appeared, Arthur Sojot's sister found a pouch containing the tags of all 14 kids in his family.
Sojot, now a postal worker living in Wahiawa, attended Ewa Elementary in the early '60s.
"I called my aunties and uncles but they couldn't remember why we got the tags," he said. But he recalls his late mother telling him the tags were issued "just in case we got lost or separated from the family."
My child was denied a library card because of her disability -- she couldn't sign the card. I straightened it out later, but I was told my daughter still would have to make some kind of mark on the card to make sure she is cognitive for library materials. My daughter can't talk and I don't know if she's cognitive. And what about people who cannot sign a card, like someone without limbs, or someone who is a visual learner but not able to write? Is the library's policy in line with the Americans with Disabilities Act?
The information you got was wrong.
Any mark -- a dot, an X, anything -- that is witnessed by library staff would have been sufficient for your daughter to get a card, a spokeswoman for the Public Libraries Branch said.
If someone is physically unable to sign a card or make a mark, a parent or guardian can do it.
"We do not deny cards to anyone," she said. "We encourage anyone to get a library card and borrow (books)."
Staff at the library you went to have been so instructed, she said.
"Our general policy is, especially for children, to encourage them to write their names. But if they're unable to, as long as their parent is there approving it, they can go ahead and do the best that they can."
To the person who found my wallet at the Academy of Arts Theatre on Nov. 4 and returned it to me promptly. A rare soul you are in our society of mischief and complacency. -- R. Hiatt Mahalo
Need help with problems? Call Kokua Line at 525-8686,
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