Bittersweet Memories at Pearl Harbor

When my family left Hawaii in 1940, I was only 16, but I tearfully vowed to come back. As the ship pulled away from the harbor, I threw several leis in the water to guarantee my return. One red carnation garland floated toward shore, a sure sign.

But in spite of that guarantee, I didn’t make it back for many years and when I did it was only as a visitor. My husband suggested we visit the Pearl Harbor Memorial. He had a historical interest. I, on the other hand, had taken Dec. 7, 1941, so personally that it hadn’t occurred to me to visit a monumentalized Pearl Harbor.

I insisted on stopping at a lei stand to purchase garlands for us. I’d read how the custom had grown for visitors to stand on Pearl Harbor’s memorial bridge, a structure that spans the sunken battleship Arizona, and cast leis on the watery grave of Dec. 7’s victims.

“Two frangipanis” was the order I gave to the lei stand’s keeper and then wondered why I had reverted to calling these lovely yellow and white flowers the name commonly used in my youth. The preferred name today is plumeria.

I carried both our leis around my neck, the intense fragrance transporting me back to the Hawaii of 1940.

The year before Pearl Harbor was attacked, I was 16 and my contact with sailors had been mostly the out-of-the-corner-of-the-eyes kind. Dressed for shore in their summer whites, Navy men wore their hats far back on their heads or else to one side, whichever way they felt would make them look more attractive to us island girls. Their loneliness was palpable, but compassion had no place in the hearts of well-brought-up teen-age girls who were afraid we’d become unwed mothers just from looking at a sailor.

Hoping for acceptance from local girls, newly arrived Navy men would rush their tans and wind up with blisters. Their wolf whistles had an aggressive tone. Sailors who had been stationed at Pearl Harbor for a longer time were nicely tanned but their whistles had taken on a sad, plaintive air. Whatever the tone, we knew never to turn our heads in the whistler’s direction. “You’ll only encourage them,” was our repeated warning to one another.

My friend Dora and I lived a few houses from each other on Prince Edward Street,

two blocks from the beach. We “did our homework” on the sand every afternoon, parking our books under a huge banyan tree and heading for warm, clear water. Our route from home to beach always took us past the lei stand on Kalakaua Boulevard, a wooden structure owned by “Honolulu Hattie.” When she heard our aloha, she’d always look up from her task of stringing red carnations or yellow-and-white frangipani into garlands and smile and talk to us. When she was busy with a sale, we would wave and walk on. If the customer was a sailor, Dora and I wouldn’t even wave for fear he’d think the wave intended for him.

But it was the sight of sailors buying leis--those symbols of love, friendship, of welcome to the stranger--for themselves that caused my hardened teen-age heart to stir with compassion.

In ancient days, the flowered garland had been an offering to the gods--that was somewhere in one of the Hawaiian history books I always left under the banyan tree while I went swimming--but the island’s lovely flowers were now thought of as an offering from the gods. Leis were placed around a recipient’s neck accompanied by the giver’s kiss.

Sometimes a sailor would accept Honolulu Hattie’s affectionate kiss on the cheek with a grin; at other times he would pretend he was buying the lei for someone else and wouldn’t let her put on his garland, doing it himself when he was halfway down the street. “Look at him,” Dora would say, “he’s pretending someone gave it to him. No, no, don’t look in a way that he can see that you’re looking. Use the corners of your eyes.”

Occasionally a sailor, in the midst of purchasing a lei from Hattie’s stand, would see us passing and ask us to place it around his neck, but Dora and I would stare straight ahead and keep walking, even though Hattie had once told us that some sailors were nice boys.

But one day, I did “the most magnanimous, generous, thoughtful thing I’d ever done in my life,” as I was later to say to Dora.

It happened when she and I were talking to Hattie, who was stringing red and pink carnations, alternating them to form a pattern. I saw two pairs of white bell-bottom trousers approaching. The sailors blocked our way out. Dora and I were hemmed in by Hattie’s long rows of untied leis, which hung like brilliant curtains on either side of us. Dora and I respectfully stood where we were, avoiding eye contact with the sailors and waiting for them to make their purchases.

For someone who was avoiding eye contact, I managed to pick up an unusual amount of detail about the taller of the two sailors, such as the fact that his badly blistered nose, which indicated he was newly stationed here, had that same adorable uplift as Mickey Rooney’s. His hair was a gentle, sandy color and his blue eyes were one shade deeper than Waikiki’s waters.

While the other sailor was selecting a red carnation lei and having Hattie tie its end-strings together, my sailor pointed to a strand and asked me, “What do you call this flower?”

“Frangipani,” I answered, avoiding Dora’s eyes as well as his. I couldn’t very well not answer, could I? Besides, Hattie’s middle-aged presence guaranteed my being chaperoned. Although Hattie wasn’t looking much like a chaperone as she placed the red carnation lei around my sailor’s friend’s neck, kissed him, and said a warm, drawn-out, Hawaiian, “A-lo-ha.”

My sailor handed Hattie the white-and gold strand of frangipani and watched while she tied it into a circle. To my surprise, Hattie then handed the lei to me and gestured toward my sailor. I couldn’t very well not put it around his neck after that. So I did and then, I guess it was because he just smiled and didn’t ask, I kissed his sunburned cheek and said, “Aloha.” I barely caught his happy reaction as Dora yanked me through a curtain of red carnations.

Now, years later, as my husband and I stood in glorious sunshine on the memorial bridge which spans the sunken hull of the Arizona, I realized I was looking at the final resting place of 1,102 Navy men, but all I could think of was the first man I’d ever kissed.

Was the broken hull, over which exotic green-and-white fish swam, the tomb of my sailor?

I took the two leis from around my neck and handed one to my husband, knowing that he would like to pay his respects because he had served in the Navy in World War II--I had married a sailor after all--and he cast his lei upon the water.

My husband suggested that perhaps I should keep the other lei for myself. He knew that during the war years, I had gotten into the habit of buying flowers to brighten cheerless rooms as I’d followed him to various ports. But I shook my head no. This lei was in memory of someone who, in his loneliness, had once bought flowers for himself. I cast the circle of sweet-smelling frangipani upon the waters.