Kailua during wartime recalled through letters

Cosette Harm’s voice caught with emotion as she read aloud the letters her grandmother Anne Powlison wrote in the days following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Powlison wrote to her son Peter, who was away at college, to tell him of all the changes war was bringing to his hometown of Kailua, and asking him to remember Hawaii in his prayers.

Powlison wrote from Hilltop House, the family home that has become a Lanikai landmark. She described seeing a Japanese plane approach from the ocean and fly so low that it was level with their windows and she could see the pilot’s eyes.

On Sunday a standing-room-only crowd of close to 150 people came to hear longtime Kailua residents tell firsthand stories of seeing the first Japanese planes head toward the island, of the bombs that dropped on Mokapu and Bellows, and of the weeks and months that followed the attack at Pearl Harbor and how their community was affected.

Paul Brennan, president of the Kailua Historical Society, wove what he called the “collective memory” around Powlison’s letters, which were only recently discovered in a box under the family’s house.

The first was postmarked Dec. 8, 1941, and the envelope said “via airmail,” though Powlison had written “or via clipper or via whatever means” to get the letter to her 19-year-old son. She wrote about food rationing and how she watered down bean soup so she could feed the soldiers who came to her house, which was eventually taken over by the Army for a lookout.

“Every day is a year long, and every night is longer than the day,” Harms read from her grandmother’s letter.

Haruko Takasu Chun recalled farm families having to dig bomb shelters. Military barracks were built in Maunawili to house thousands of soldiers, and Chun remembers a prisoner of war camp built in the valley. “My sister and I went up to the fence and threw comic books and magazines over, and the Italian prisoners would throw candy bars over the top to us in return,” Chun said.

Dick Freeman described the National Guardsmen who were sent to watch over Kailua Beach, which was strung with barbed wire to ward off invaders.

“These were all Hawaii boys. None were in khakis,” Freeman said. “They were all in winter uniforms, blue wool with an overcoat that weighed about 10 pounds. They would go down and sit on the beach.”

Brennan quoted the 1940 census as pegging Kailua’s population at 1,473 people. By 1945 that number had jumped to 4,500. The war had a huge impact on the small rural town.

Now, it was noted, there are more than 50,000 people living in and around Kailua.

After all this time, it would seem that all the stories have already been told. Brennan said that though the presentations ended at 5 p.m., people stayed and the conversations went on much longer. There was so much new information to share.

“There’s nothing quite like sitting at the feet of those who were there,” Brennan said.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.