BURL BURLINGAME / BBURLINGAME@STARBULLETIN.COM This site at Castle Junction is a memorial to the fallen Windward soldiers of World War II and Korea.

Mystery boulder

THIS mysterious boulder is familiar to Windward commuters -- it sits on a whitewashed base in a neatly kept field at Castle Junction, one of the most attractive automobile intersections in Hawaii, and perhaps the country. It's near a pleasant looking ranch house, which is appropriate, as it's the headquarters of Kaneohe Ranch.

Across the intersection is the brutally shaved hillside recently completed by highway engineers, which would look less odd if they hadn't shaped the entire hillside around a single support wire from a lonesome utility pole. Maybe trees would help.

The boulder is the result of a simple act of decency in Mississippi during World War II.

Earl Melvin Finch, a prosperous young rancher from Hattiesberg, noticed some lonely GIs from Camp Shelby one day and invited them home for dinner. No big deal when there was a war on, except that these were AJAs with the 442nd. Finch's neighbors ganged up on him when they found out he was entertaining some of those "damn Japs."

Finch, by all accounts a thoroughly decent guy, became a "one-man USO" for the nisei, and his efforts to make Hawaii boys feel at home became legendary. If you're a Japanese American over 50 and your name is Earl, chances are you're named after Finch.

But then the local boys went on to Europe and created a military legend.

BURL BURLINGAME / BBURLINGAME@STARBULLETIN.COM

Finch continued to correspond with the AJA vets, and some chipped in to buy him a ticket to Hawaii. He finally made it here in 1946 and was stunned by his reception, the largest ever given a private citizen. He dined with the governor and mayor, was feted at lavish parties, became the first honorary member of the 442nd, and people just gave him money. Piles of money.

He used it to honor the 442nd's bravery. A Windward reception for Gold Star Mothers -- women who had lost a son in combat -- was memorialized in the plaque and boulder at Castle Junction, credited in part, to Finch. Korean War losses were added later.

Finch continued to be ostracized in Mississippi and became a businessman and promoter in Honolulu. He adopted an orphan -- now noted economist Seiji Naya -- and introduced Hawaii to rock 'n' roll. He died in 1965 at age 49.

At a Central Union Church service, Gov. John Burns delivered the eulogy before hundreds of 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the 100th Battalion veterans. "Unpopular though it may have been with his neighbors, Earl recognized that those who were willing to make sacrifices in the face of adversity deserved no less than the hand of friendship," Burns noted.

Recently, a concrete light fixture simulating a boulder was added to the base of the memorial so it can be illuminated at night. The site also features a confusing welter of decaying utility poles that seem to have little purpose.