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Warm memories
of Lanakila endure

Fifty people gather to celebrate
the 75th anniversary of Lanakila
Elementary School

By Lori Tighe
Star-Bulletin

FREDERICK Young arrived on the first day of school in 1943 at Lanakila Elementary dripping wet from walking through taro fields in the rain.

But instead of being sent home, his teacher sent him to the broom closet to change into a red kimono.

"If you remember seeing a kid wearing a red kimono to the cafeteria, that was me," he said laughing.

To this day he won't wear a robe, added his wife, Nancy.

They have gray hair, wrinkles and glasses, but about 50 people at a special reunion last night giggled like second-graders recalling memories of Lanakila Elementary School, before a fire wiped out its past in 1955.

Officials, celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, realized a bulk of its history was missing when they searched for memorabilia and found little but dust. Organizers put the word out to graduates.

They dug up their old pictures of gangly, toothless 6-year-olds in bare feet from a time when teachers spanked children and they weren't sued for it. The pictures will be published in a 75th anniversary booklet.

Herbert Hoo, 81, was there when the school opened.

"We put earthworms on the girls desks, hair in the inkwells and centipedes in the teachers drawers," he laughed. "Teachers took a nickel out of their own pocket to buy us lunch. I still long for those days up to 12 years old. Those were the best days of my life."

Boys wore three pairs of pants for a certain teacher who used "an oar as a paddle," said Phil Chun, 65, father of Sen. Suzanne Chun-Oakland, who also attended Lanakila.

They remember the gas masks, bringing their lunch in the gas masks, even putting on their gas masks with two musubis forgotten inside.

They remember the bomb shelters on the school grounds filled with muddy water, lots of mosquitoes and jumping toads.

Walter Yim, 65, who recognized himself in the school photo published in the Star-Bulletin on Monday, came to the reunion to see who else showed up.

"I learned something at Lanakila that I took with me for the rest of my life, salesmanship," Yim said. "I'm a salesman today."

He, Donald Chang, Kenneth Lawrence and Chun took shop classes to learn woodworking half the year and gardening the other half. They grew string beans and sold them for 10 cents a pound.

"I learned to use a chisel, a saw, a plane. Today they don't have that. I've always taken those skills with me," he said.

Everybody had to work a day in the cafeteria washing dishes and serving food, in exchange for a free lunch.

Chang, Lawrence, Yim and Chun also recall playing a game called something like "alovea," but they weren't sure of the spelling.

They stuffed a tobacco bag with grass or seeds and then hit people with them, knocking them out of the game.

"It stung too," Chun recalled, laughing.

The fire destroyed the photos of their time, but thankfully their memories survived, said current principal, Randy Higa.

"These stories are so important," he said.