Dear Diary 1966:
It is interesting that the Air Force considers Hawaii an overseas assignment, because it really does feel like a foreign country over here. Off base, everything is very Asian, and whites are definitely in the minority. If I didn’t know better, I would think I was in Hong Kong or someplace. When I’m walking around Honolulu or Waikiki, I sometimes feel like an ex-pat in some exotic faraway land. Of course, having never traveled much, I may be more impressionable than most people. But I tell you this, it really does seem more like an American territory than an American state. To get a State of Hawaii driver’s license, for example, all you need to do is show them your mainland driver’s license.
Few civilians probably give it much thought, but Hickam Field is sensational beachfront property. I have joined the Hickam Sailing Club where I get access to dinghy, sun, and star class sailboats. Somebody told me that the waters off Hickam by the Airman’s Club used to be a royal playground, and I believe him. The transparent turquoise waters near the entrance to Pearl Harbor are beautiful, and the view of Diamond Head is amazing and unobstructed because Honolulu Bay curves in and so we get a direct view of the crater.
The sailing club is practically the only good thing about Hickam, though. It’s an old place, and the barracks are terrible. The walls in my barracks actually have large holes in them from when somebody in the past punched his fist through them. And the food on base is awful. We avoid it all at costs, except on Sunday nights when they serve cold cuts. The highlight of barracks life is watching “Gunsmoke” on a neighbor’s new color TV while eating takeout food from Chicken Delight. They deliver directly to the base and get a lot of our business. Like the ad says, “Don’t cook tonight, call Chicken Delight!”
I’ve gotten to know the Hawaiian woman who is the waitress at the café in the complex where we work. She is a big momma, and a real crack up, always making jokes, some of them off-color. But she is older than us and so can be parental tough with us at times. One day for lunch I ordered a tuna sandwich and an egg salad sandwich. But instead of getting what I thought I had ordered, she brought me two sandwiches with both tuna and egg salad on them. “Not tuna and egg salad on the same sandwich,” I complained. She looked at me without smiling, said my name sternly, and then barked: “Just eat it and shut up.” So I did.
An old high school friend just visited me while on R & R from Vietnam. I took him to the ramshackle open-air movie theater that we have here on base. He said it was just like the open-air theaters that they have over there in Vietnam, except that over there movie watchers need to hit the dirt occasionally because drive-by shooters like to spray the theaters with bullets.
-excerpted from essay #3, World War II and the State of Hawaii
Dear Diary 1967:
I can’t even begin to tell you how many folk concerts my girlfriend and I went to this summer. At the Shell in Waikiki we saw Joan Baez, Mimi Farina, Peter Paul and Mary, and a bunch of other groups that I can’t even remember at the moment. It’s really quite fun, and very anti-war. It helps to have so many wonderful musical allies, but it doesn’t really take my mind off my military situation.
We’ve also been going to the north shore a lot for a pure escape. Body surfing is good there, and when it’s not good for body surfing it’s great for snorkeling. Last weekend there were no waves to speak of, so we were snorkeling in Waimea Bay when I saw some little local kids lining up in deep water next to the giant rock and went over to find out what they were doing. As it turned out, there was a tunnel about five feet below the water surface that went through the rock all the way to the other side. I gave my mask and snorkel to my girlfriend and got in line. The kids were all giggling and happy, and my girlfriend swam around to the other side of the rock where kids were popping out and rising to the surface. Everybody was so happy I didn’t even think at first about how long of a swim underwater this would be, but soon the thought occurred to me because it was my turn and the kids pushed me under. I dove and followed the little guy in front of me down to the hole in the rock, which was about four feet across, and I could feel the little guy behind me hitting my toes with his fingers as he swam. I could almost hear those kids giggling underwater when it suddenly occurred to me that this was kind of dangerous. It was impossible to turn back, and the only hope for me and for everybody else was to just keep going. So I decided very quickly to put the danger out of mind and just swim like the devil. I tried to keep up with the kids ahead of me, and I tried not to slow down the kids behind me, but I was clearly the slow poke in the group. We must have been about 45 seconds into the swim and two-thirds through the rock when I began to have doubts again. But I thought of my beautiful half-Chinese girlfriend and pushed on. When I exited the tunnel, I was a happy boy, but the exit hole was actually about 12 feet below water level so I still had to make it to the surface before my lungs burst, which I did, thankfully. “Hey, so now you’re a local kid,” said my girlfriend. “Let’s not talk about it,” I said.
–excerpted from essay #3, World War II and the State of Hawaii