Rearview: Big Island tsunami survivor recalls harrowing ordeal 75 years later

Seventy-five years ago an 8.1-magnitude earthquake in Alaska generated a series of tsunamis that hit Hawaii on the morning of April 1, 1946, killing 159 people.

Recently, I met a survivor of that catastrophic event, a woman who was a teacher at Laupahoehoe School north of Hilo. She’s 97 now and lives in Lanikai. Her name is Marsue McGinnis McShane, and her story is amazing.

McGinnis was from Ohio. She responded to a flyer offering teaching jobs in Hawaii and came here in September 1945. She was 20 years old, and World War II was just coming to an end.

She came over on the SS Matsonia, a gray Navy troop ship during the war. “We had lifeboat drills and had to wear life preservers the whole time, whether we were eating, or if we left our cabin, we had to wear one,” McGinnis told Warren Nishimoto in a University of Hawaii oral history interview in 1999.

McGinnis was assigned to Laupahoehoe School where she taught arts and crafts and girls PE to middle schoolers.

She lived in a cottage with three other new teachers on campus, right on the ocean. “Waves crashed on rocks a short distance from our cottage, and of course, we turned around and looked at Mauna Kea covered with snow. It was just absolutely amazing. I thought it was the most gorgeous spot in the whole world.”

The cottages were very comfortable, McGinnis said. They had four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen with a kerosene stove and a central dining room.

The new teachers were invited to parties, luau, weddings and social occasions in the community. She had a date or two with the Laupahoehoe Hospital doctor, Leabert Fernandez, a son of carnival producer E.K. Fernandez. He took her dancing in Hilo. A nearby ranch invited the teachers to ride horses.

At Christmas the four new teachers came to Honolulu and stayed at the Moana Hotel. “We had all these contacts with naval officers,” McGinnis continued. “We just had a ball as far as dancing and dates and everything. The war was over, and Honolulu was still filled with military men.”

Another trip there was planned for spring break, but that was not to be.

“April 1 was the week before spring vacation. Everything was ready for this final week. We gave tests and art projects were due.”

April 1 was Monday, April Fools’ Day. School began at 8 a.m., “but the kids began to arrive at 6:30 because that’s when their parents were due in the fields. So they’d drop their kids off or the buses would start arriving then.

“We teachers were still in our pajamas. We had a whole hour to get ready for school. But we heard a knock on the door. It was Danny Akiona, who lived next door, and he said, ‘Come and see the tidal wave.’ And we thought, tidal wave?

“He said, ‘Come. Come and see it.’ So we put on our bathrobes and slippers and went out.”

A significant tidal wave — we now call them tsunamis — had not hit since 1923, and no one in Laupahoehoe knew what to expect.

“The ocean sucked out like a bathtub emptying.” McGinnis recalled. “Then it came back in a little above the high-water mark.

“We turned around to go back in and get dressed. Then, by golly, it sucked out again. And our thought was, being from Ohio and Virginia, ‘Well, this must be a twin tidal wave. Two of them. That’s very unusual. I have to write about that.’

“But this time it sucked out more, and when it came in it uprooted some nau­paka, these (bright) green plants, and made kind of a mess there.

“And by that time the kids that were swinging at the playground rushed over, and they were watching the tidal wave with us.

“The third time, it washed some fish up onto the athletic field. The kids were trying to catch the fish, and everyone was having a field day. ‘Oh boy, isn’t this something,’ you know.

“So we went back to the cottage to get some clothes on. I got into bluejeans, saddle shoes, socks and a big lumberjack shirt.

“Meanwhile, they said, ‘We ought to take a picture of this mess out here and the kids catching the fish.’ I was the only one that had film in my camera. So I went out on the porch to get a picture.

“I said, ‘Well, it’s doing it again, and I hope this is one of the big ones so I can get a …’ But, it came and it just kept coming. It didn’t crash. It kept coming and got bigger.

“Fred Kruse and his science students were out on the rocks looking at the uncovered (seafloor).

“This wave just got bigger and bigger. That was the first time that anybody thought to be afraid.”

The tsunami slammed into and broke the windows of her cottage. McGinnis found herself in the water, hanging onto the roof of the cottage as it collapsed. She thought she was going to die, but she found herself offshore surrounded by debris. She grabbed onto a piece of a house.

“The sea was very rough. It was a rainy day, but it stopped raining and it was not a very good day. But I remember taking stock. My saddle shoes and socks were gone. My bluejeans were gone. I had a brassiere, panties and this huge wool shirt, thank goodness. And that’s all I had.”

She found a door and clung to it. She was now miles from shore.

Dr. Fernandez thought some may have been swept out to sea, but the boats in the area had been destroyed. He located a boat in Waimea 40 miles away, fitted it with a motor and set off to sea with three others around 5 p.m.

A plane dropped a rubber raft, and McGinnis got in it. Then the rescue boat appeared. It had picked up two boys, Ronald Yamaoka and Yoshio Awakuni, seventh and eighth graders who had been clinging to a hala tree.

They came upon McGinnis just as it was getting dark. She had been in the water nine hours. Her three roommates were never found.

She had several bruises and had taken in a lot of salt water. They took her to the Laupahoehoe Hospital for observation. She had a lot of respect for Fernandez, as he had delivered over 1,000 babies in his years there and took great care of the residents.

A few days later Fernandez proposed to her. Why did she accept? I asked her.

Fernandez and she had met just a few times. He had two young boys from his first marriage. He had saved her life. Her mother, who had come quickly from Ohio, liked that he was a doctor.

“We were meant to be together,” McGinnis told me last week. They were married three months later. “It didn’t seem fast to me,” she said.

Later, Fernandez would joke that when his boat found her, he had said, “Say you’ll marry me or I’ll throw you back in.”

Fernandez became a plastic surgeon on Oahu. They had a boy, Tracy, and two girls, Linda and Holly. McGinnis taught at Kailua Intermediate and later Punahou. She lives in Lanikai today with the help of her two daughters.

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