“Hawaiian Death” by Caleb Chronister

(I dedicate this book for all of my friends in Hawaii. They were all great friends, and I hope they have a good life. Also to my Grandma Vidinha, because she helped me with my ukulele.)

It was a cold morning on Oahu and Kamalei’s alarm clock war going off. His eyes were all puffy and he had sleep still in his eyes. Each Sunday Kamalei got up ar 7 am to go fishing with his father. It was December 7^th, 1941. There were packing their tackle box when “boom”! he and his father jumped like little kids in a bouncy house. They went outside to find a big black cloud shaped like a mushroom. All of a sudden hundreds more and started coming. He and his father ran inside to find his two sisters and mother hiding in a closet crying and screaming. His father told him to go outside in the backyard to the emergency call box. He ran to the tool shelter where the emergency call box was. As he opened the emergency call box, a bomb landed ten feet from the shelter. The shelter fell on top of Kamalei, but all he remembered was breaking through the screen and seeing a gasoline can hit his forehead knocking him out.

Waking to jet black, he got up and tried to figure out where he was. He finally found out by breaking through the side door of the shelter. He tried to call for his dad, on and his sisters. He walked the street trying to find somebody. Nothing. No sign of anybody. He got a little teary-eyed thinking that he was alone, but then he heard trucks. He turned around and saw army trucks about two hundred feet away from him. He tried to signal them, but he couldn’t see them. Then he heard a man’s voice and saw a cracked walkie-talkie on the ground. Kamalei picked it up. He looked for the talk button, but it was broken as he could only hear them, not speak to them. He listened carefully and heard the man say that they got all the civilians on boats and are loading the last boat for Kauai, Maui, and the Big Island. He listened again and heard that they were at Kanaohe Bay. The man said that the Japanese are bombing Pearl Harbor. “Pearl Harbor? I live right down the street from Pearl Harbor!” Kamalei thought. The man also said that there was a family of four refusing to go on the boat because they still had a boy at home. ”That’s my family trying to find me.”

Kamalei ate some mangos from the Tanaguchi’s mango tree. He slept in a banged up car because all the houses, including his, had been destroyed. He used a car seat cover as a blanket and a teddy bear as a pillow. AS he was falling asleep, he thought about his family, his dad, mom and two sisters. Then, he slowly fell asleep.

When he woke up, he heard trucks and people yelling. He looked out the broken window and saw tents and men on benches. “They are all Japanese,” Kamalei thought. He had an idea that it might be a camp or a base. He had to get out there. He had a plan to stay in the car until nightfall, and he’d eat all the mangos htat he packed in a cloth he found in the car. He found a Sudoku book and a mechanical pencil, which was great. The person who owned the Sudoku book only did two, so the rest of the book was empty, and the pencil was full of lead. Time flew by, and it was getting close to night.

He just finished the last one in the book when he realized that it was sunset, and he put the book down and got ready to escape. He crawled out the back seat window and headed towards a car that got flipped upside down and ducked. All of a sudden a Japanese soldier yells, “Se ying, se ying” (which probably meant “A boy”). The Japanese soldier started to run towards Kamalei, and when he was five feet away, Kamalei started running. He talked into his wlakie-talkie and said something. Then, more Japanese approached and trapped Kamalei. He stops and thinks, “Oh my God, I’m dead!”

The soldiers put him in a cage that’s really hard to break. There was a piece of metal next to Kamalei, so he grabbed it and cut the rope handcuff. The only thing left is to undo the lock. He remembered that Friday at school he put a paper clip in his pocket, so he put it in the lock and twisted it. He must have twisted it about three hundred times, but he still couldn’t get it. He tried once more. He put it in the lock and twisted it one more time and got it. He got out and down to his house. He went into his backyard and went to the destroyed tool shelter, and he dug up the emergency call box and turned it on. He heard talking and pressed the talk button, and an American soldier responded. Kamalei asked the U.S. Military to come and rescue him, and they said they’d meet him at midnight. It seemed like three days passed for them to get there, but it was only three hours when they arrived. The military escorted Kamalei in a helicopter to meet his family safely on Kauai. After that day he was always thankful for his life and honored those who perished in that unfortunate Hawaiian death.

Waimea United Church of Christ

P.O. Box 457

Waimea, HI 96796