ALICE HARDERS SORENSEN
I met Alice Sorensen at a National League of American Pen Women luncheon at the Pineapple Room at Macy’s. I was talking with fellow member, Dorothy Winslow Wright about my interest in the experiences of women during World War II and she told me that during the war she was among the first female fire fighters in Boston.1 When I explained that my focus was on women who lived in Hawaii, Dorothy promptly introduced me to her friend, Alice Sorensen, explaining that Alice watched the attack on Pearl Harbor from the Naval Housing at Makalapa.
Alice Harders Sorensen is a tall, graceful woman. Her hair is naturally silver and waved. She dresses youthfully; her posture is confident yet comfortable, and her manner is kind, almost maternal. Alice told me her maiden name is Harders and that her great uncle, Hartwig Harders, was the first brew master in Hawaii and then she explained how her family immigrated to Hawaii.
“My father, Hans Harders, was a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War I.” Her pride was obvious. “After the war, he taught at King College in Bristol, Tennessee; that’s where I was born on May 8, 1922. The next year Harders served as the Commandant and military history teacher at St. John’s Military Academy in Delafield, Wisconsin.
While at St. Johns, Hans Harders wrote to his uncle, Hartwig Harders, the brew master. Hartwig had started his own company and offered Hans a job as a salesman. Hans accepted; in June 1924, the Harders family immigrated to Hawaii. Alice was two years old.
“It was a wonderful childhood,” Alice said. “Some vivid memories were of the Sunday drives in the family Dodge. To satisfy his frustrated sense of adventure, Father always took us to places he loved. He often took us to Pier Two because that’s where the foreign ships docked and sometimes they would invite us onboard to tour the ships. I remember being invited aboard a Russian whaler.” Alice recited the details of that tour—the stench, the filth, the impressions of sea-going whalers—all through her eyes as an eight-year old girl. “And on one Sunday, we saw smoke at the pier. A Los Angeles Steamship Company ship was on fire. As I remember, we were the only people there and we just watched the ship.” (On Sunday, May 25, 1930, a fire took over the Los Angeles Steamship Company, The City of Honolulu, while she was berthed at Pier Two. The ship sank, but was raised and returned to Los Angeles during October 1930 under her own power.)
Alice was telling me that during the summers her father would take her and her mother on his sales visits around the island, when the Pen Women meeting was called to order and her story was cut short.
The program proceeded, the luncheon concluded and Alice and I continued to talk as we walked through Macy’s to the parking lot and arranged to meet the following Wednesday at the Outrigger Canoe Club.
As agreed, we met at 10 a.m. Alice was wearing a white silk dress dappled with bold strokes of primary colors. I settled at her table, spread out my notebooks, newspaper clippings and photographs as the waiter served us our first round of coffee.
The two of us were the only guests in the dining room. There was a group of women playing bridge on the lanai and some volleyball players on the beach; Alice and I had the dining room to ourselves, nestled in a corner table facing the ocean.
Alice took up her story as if the conversation had never ended. “It was Dorothy Wright who got me to join Pen Women. She encouraged me to write feature stories for the Honolulu News and then she sponsored me as a member. One of the first pieces I wrote was about Pearl Harbor. I also wrote one about one of those Sunday drives I was telling you about. It was the day my father took Mother and me to see the ‘Bird of Paradise’ in 1927.”2
I pulled out a copy of that article from by folder and handed it to Alice.
“Yes.” She nodded, flipping the pages as she skimmed the piece. “The ‘Bird of Paradise’ was a tri-motor plane that flew the first non-stop flight from California to Hawaii.” She handed the article back to me. “I knew we were doing something important from the way my father was acting. He was so excited during the entire trip to Wheeler Field. It took us about forty-five minutes to get there, almost the same time as it would take us now even though back the roads were no more than two lanes lined by sugarcane and pineapple, but there was no traffic.
“Look at my hair,” she said. “It was a ‘boy cut’ that I insisted on. My mother tried to discourage me, but I just had to have it. She took me to a barber and gave me a cut like a boy’s. It was cut over my ears, I had bangs, but it was shaved in the back. When my father came home that night, he pretended he didn’t know who I was and asked who the little boy was.”
The photo showed a skinny-five year old Alice, wearing a short dress, her hands clasped in front of her. She squinted, smiling at the camera.
Behind Alice was the Atlantic-Fokker C-2 plane. A small crowd of men in suits and bowlers, and soldiers in uniforms with jodhpurs and high leather boots were inspecting the plane. To the right of the plane, was the only woman in the photograph. She was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a flowing calf-length dress. “Isn’t she elegant?” I remarked.
Alice leaned forward and I angled the paper towards her. “That’s my mother,” she said. “That was a crème-colored travel dress that matched her heels, hose and gloves and her hat was a crème-colored organza.” Alice fingered the photo. “I was named after her.”
I showed Alice a copy of an article she wrote entitled “War Years” which included a photo of her and Christian Sorensen on their wedding day. In the photo, 2nd Lieutenant Chris Sorensen was in his Army dress uniform and Alice was in a billowing wedding gown. The couple posed on the steps of Central Union Church under an arch of swords formed by fellow officers. I told Alice that I looked up her wedding photo in the Honolulu Advertiser and that I couldn’t recognize the flowers she carried in her bouquet.
“They were water lilies,” she said. “They’re my favorite flowers—I still raise some in my front yard at home—and they went beautifully with my gown.” I asked Alice to describe her gown. She said, “It was satin with a slight train and a sweet heart neckline with embroidered seed pearls. It cost mother twenty-nine dollars.” (Before the war the average two-week salary for an office secretary was thirty five dollars.)
Alice continued, “Chris and I were married on the first day of spring—March 21, 1942. Fortunately, there was no air raid that day. The ceremony went off as scheduled and I was married with all the pomp and circumstance that every young girl dreams of.” But there were some adjustments due to the war. “The ceremony was at four p.m. at Central Union Church and the reception was at my parents’ house in Manoa. Mother was able to get a caterer and we served finger sandwiches but there was a seven p.m. curfew, and all the guests had to be home and off the streets within three hours of the wedding. It didn’t leave much time.”
I told Alice that I had read that Central Union’s flower garden was turned into a Victory Garden during the war and that some brides posed in front of the cabbage patch and asked if she was one of those brides.
“We didn’t take any photos at all on our wedding day,” she said. “There were so many weddings at the beginning of the war that the earliest I could arrange one was for the following weekend. So, that next weekend, Chris and I got all dressed up again to take our wedding portrait. Unfortunately, none of the bridal party was able to pose with us.”3
I asked her about the beginning of the war and where she was on the morning of December 7, 1941. She said, “I was nineteen years old. I was spending the weekend with my friend Evelyn, at her house at Makalapa Navy Housing. Evelyn’s father was Commander ‘Swede’ Momsen.” Alice paused. “He invented the Momsen lung.” She said it as if I should know who Commander Momsen was. “He was responsible for saving the lives of the crew of the submarine Squalus.” She continued as if to help jog my memory. “Peter Maas wrote a book about it, The Terrible Hours, and there was a movie, Submerged.”
I apologized and told her I would research who he was.
Alice returned to her story, “On the morning of the 7th, I was awakened by the attack. Evelyn and I popped out of our beds. The two of us ran to look out the windows that faced Pearl Harbor. The Momsen’s house was on a slight hill and from the back yard we could look straight across to Pearl Harbor. We put on our clothes and went downstairs and out into the yard.
“We had a bird’s eye view of it all. Bombs, fire. There were towers of black smoke that billowed over Ford Island and blew toward Honolulu, covering everything with smoke. From where I stood, I could see Japanese planes coming directly over our heads. They were so low I could see the pilot’s faces.” Alice pointed to the top of a coconut tree on the beach. “Do you see the top of the tree?” she asked. “They were flying that low. I could feel the vibrations of the plane. I could see the Japanese fly over Pearl Harbor and dart in and out of the smoke and I could hear them attack and our clothes shook from the effect of the concussion. We just stood there and watched. Even at Admiral Kimmel’s house which was above Evelyn’s, we saw the admiral in his bathrobe watching.”
Alice’s tone was somber. She continued her story as if no matter what she said, the experience of the day could never be truly understood or shared by someone who did not witness the attack. “There were flames on the water.” She repeated that to me several times. “And boats bobbing in and out of the smoke. Tugboats, fireboats, liberty boats—they were trying to rescue sailors in the water. The fireboats pumped out water but the harbor still burned.” Alice paused, “I can still remember the smell of the burning oil and the bombs and I’ll never forget the sound of bombs screaming down.”
Unlike many civilians in Hawaii, Alice had expected the Japanese. “I had been reading the newspapers and listening to comments about the American relations with Japan. There were escalating words between the two countries and so many little things were happening.” On the drive out to the Momsen’s home on Friday, December 5, Alice remarked to a friend that America would be at war within two weeks.
“It’s amazing to me that from the Momsen’s lawn, I watched the beginning of the war. I remember hearing a sentry yell, ‘When the hell are they going to relieve me?’ I think he was posted at the guard fence. I remember the ground shaking and the part of the dining room of the Momsen’s house was shot off. The next thing I remember is calling my mother to tell her I was safe and that I would get home as soon as possible. Mother didn’t know we were at war. When I told her, she ran next door to tell the neighbors. Of course, they didn’t believe her.
“I didn’t leave Makalapa until 2 p.m. that day. I was evacuated in a caravan and driven home. When I got home, mother told me that Mrs. Rudee called. Mrs. Rudee was an old family friend from their days at St. John’s Military Academy in Delafield, whose husband was not stationed at Hickam. Mrs. Rudee asked Mother if she and three other wives from Hickam could stay with us because their homes had been strafed by machine gun fire from low-flying Japanese planes and their entire housing area was evacuated. Of course, my mother welcomed them.
“When Mrs. Rudee and the other Hickam wives arrived, I remember staring into the car they came in. The car had been used as an ambulance during the attack and the back seat was covered with blood. A wool Army blanket had been draped over the seats, but some blood seeped through and couldn’t be hidden.
“By the time our guests arrived, my father had already covered the windows of our house with tar paper. The overall effect was to make the house feel hot and humid. The paper blocked out breezes and light and trapped in the heat. There was no TV then, and all our news came from the radio. Our radio was a large RCA model. There were large tubes in the radio, and they cast a glow from the back so my father put the radio on the floor against an interior wall so no light would shine from the tubes. Then he brought in our supply of surplus food from the garage. It was mostly cans of spaghetti, fruit cocktail and tuna, but it came in handy feeding the four extra women.
“The morning after the attack, my mother sent me to Hadley’s Bakery on Beretania Street to buy bread because she knew that food would become scarce—and she was right. People were already lined up on the sidewalk in front of Hadley’s and in front of every other store on Beretania Street, and for the rest of the war it seems like all we did was stand in line for something.
“The first few days after the attack, the rumors were rampant. Newspapers headlines reported parachutists landing at St. Louis Heights (St. Louis Heights is east of Honolulu, approximately five miles). There were radio announcements to boil water because the enemy poisoned the water. A few hours later, there would be announcements declaring the water safe and that everyone should fill their bathtubs in case the current water supply was poisoned. We even heard that the Lurline was sunk. My family believed that rumor because it supposedly came from the Matson manager’s line. But it wasn’t true.
“There was nothing routine or normal about those first days. There was no telephone service, the schools were closed, there were black outs, wardens walked around with armed guns and there was an over riding fear that the Japanese would be coming back.
“I remember my father working long hours, seven days a week, supporting the military any way he could. The morning of the attack, he dispatched the fleet of Harders Company trucks to be used by the Army and the Civil Defense as ambulances and supply trucks.
“Radio announcements were broadcast telling us to stay off the roads and off the phones. Almost immediately, the phone lines to the outer islands and to the mainland were shut down.” When I asked Alice how she contacted Chris to tell him she was safe, she explained that she didn’t try because she knew she wouldn’t be able to contact him.
“Chris and I weren’t officially engaged then. Before the war, he left Oahu and took a job with the Dole Pineapple Company on the island of Lanai. That’s where he was living when he was drafted in November of 1940. That’s when he came back to Oahu for basic training at Schofield Barrack and when was in training he applied and was accepted to Officers’ Candidate School at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.”
Christian Sorensen was among the first men drafted in Hawaii. In November 1940, all across the United States, in city halls, auditoriums and church basements, lotteries were held which decided the fates of men by the chance selection of a numbered ball. At Iolani Palace on November 13, 1940, Governor Poindexter drew the first numbered selecting the first draftee from Hawaii at 9:20 a.m. It took nineteen hours to complete the quota of 6,500 men. Chris Sorensen was among those selected.
“After Chris returned from Lanai we dated more seriously. Then he left for Belvoir in October 1941. Our country was still at peace and I was a student at the University of Hawaii. Chris and I talked about marriage but didn’t make any formal plans. The war changed our lives over night. The day after the attack, the Military Governor closed all public schools on Oahu, including the University of Hawaii.” Alice never considered herself a scholar. She said, “I signed up for a botany class at the university and thought I was going to learn about gardening. After the university closed, students were urged to take defense-related jobs. My mother spotted an ad in the newspaper for a job with the Corps of Engineers in Honolulu. The pay was excellent and it seemed the right thing to do, so off I went to Pier Two and found my first job. It was a clerical position and I was paid the enormous sum of $125 a month. The salary seemed astronomical! Right before the war, girls who graduated from college were being paid $75 a month at local banks. After two months on the job, I was earning $155 per month—thirty dollars more per month than Chris who was an Army 2nd Lieutenant—he used to tell people he married me for my money.” Alice smiled.
“When Chris got home he told me about the afternoon the Hawaii boys at Fort Belvoir heard about the attack. They headed to Washington to the Hawaii Delegate Sam King’s office and pleaded to be sent back home so they could ‘demolish the enemy.’ Of course, the army wouldn’t transfer them. They had to complete Officers’ Candidate School and they came home the end of January as commissioned 2nd Lieutenants.
“Chris told me about the morning their ship sailed into Pearl Harbor. They sailed from California in a luxury liner which had been taken over by the military. He said most of the luxury was stripped from the ship to accommodate the numbers of troops on board. He described the feeling when the ship entered the harbor—the men were lined up at the railing. When they saw the devastation of the ships in at Pearl Harbor still smoking, six weeks after the attack, a silence swept over them.
“After war was declared, Chris wrote to me from Virginia and asked to marry me and I accepted. We had no idea how long he would be home or where he would be sent. When he got home, he was assigned to the 804th Aviation Battalion Engineers. (The 804th was responsible for building and restoring airfields.) He worked long hours, every day. Around the beginning of May his company was doing work in Kualoa; they were turning a pasture into a military airfield. His men leveled the land and burrowed bunkers into the sides of the mountains to store bombs. Then, they laid large metal landing mats down so the heavy bombers could use it as an air strip.”
Alice said, “I knew something was going on, everyone did. There was a sense of excitement on the island, but no one knew what was being planned. Chris never told me about his assignment in Kualoa; his men were building an air strip that was used by the bombers who attacked the Japanese at Midway.” (The Battle of Midway was on June 6, 1942.)
“After the battle, Chris told me how excited his men were when they watched ‘our boys take off.’” Alice paused. She crossed her arms on the table. “You must understand, the victory at Midway was the success story that lifted the morale of the entire nation. But for those of us who lived in Hawaii, it was much more. Before Midway, the threat of a land invasion was quite real and fear was part of our daily lives. After the battle, we felt that the probability of an invasion was greatly diminished.” That sentiment was echoed by almost every woman I interviewed.
Alice repeated her point. “Everyone knew that we had to beat the Japanese. If we lost, there’s no question that the Japanese would have worked themselves down the island chain and Hawaii would been invaded.” Then she softened her voice and her demeanor. “I am grateful to God for the blessing of bringing our country through those terrible years.” Her shoulders relaxed, she sat back and sighed. “There were some good times though, and Chris and I were newly married and very much in love.”
She sipped her coffee, and then continued. “During the war, Chris and I lived in army housing at Schofield Barracks across from McComb Gate. There was no family housing on base then and only soldiers who were married to local girls could get quarters. The military families who had been living in Hawaii before the attack had been evacuated to the mainland, not only for their safety, but to relieve the island of the extra stress of supplying them with food, gasoline and security.
“Our apartment was so close to the Schofield McComb gate that I felt the rumbles from the army trucks and heavy armored equipment.
“Sometimes at night, Chris and I walked to the base to see a movie. When we approached the base gate, a sentry would shout, ‘Halt, advance and be recognized.’ And Chris would proceed, show his I.D. and I would stand back, about twenty feet away; then the sentry allowed us to proceed.
Alice and I talked for five hours. The lunch crowd swelled and ebbed, and we were once more the only ones in the dining room. We arranged to meet again and planned to visit Navy Housing at Makalapa to find Commander Momsen’s house where Alice had been on December 7, 1941.
When I picked Alice up for our day at Makalapa, she was wearing shorts, running shoes, sunglasses and carrying a camera. “I want to take a picture of myself in front of Evelyn Momsen’s house and send it to her.” I, too, packed a camera planning to take the same photo.
We arrived at Makalapa Naval Housing by ten a.m. It was a pristine June morning, the mock orange and plumeria were in bloom and the petals of the monkey pod trees carpeted the streets. As I drove up Makalapa Drive, Alice took a piece of paper from her purse and read the address of Commander’s Momsen’s home. “54 Halawa Drive.”
We wound our way down Makalapa Drive. A few women were mowing their lawns and a young mother jogged on the sidewalk while pushing a big-wheeled baby stroller. We continued slowly down the street and turned on to Halawa Drive reading the house numbers out loud. “Sixty-two, sixty, fifty-eight, fifty-six.” The last house on the street was fifty-six. There was no 54 Halawa Drive where the Momsen home should have been. In its place was a parking lot. Alice and I got out of the car and walked around. We asked some of the women in the neighborhood if they could help us, but no one knew anything about the Momsen residence.
Alice walked through a small field behind the homes on Halawa Drive; by mid-morning it was hot and the sun was intense. Alice pointed down the hill behind a high wood-slat fence. “Pearl Harbor was right there.” She walked up to the fence and tried to peer between the slats. Behind the fence was thick uncut brush. “The road was right down there. I remember looking down and seeing trucks loaded with wounded men. Some of them had burned clothes and burned skin and I think some were bodies of the dead.”
The road Alice referred to is Kamehameha Highway. It’s still there but it can’t be seen from where we stood because the view is blocked by sixty-years of untamed vegetation and a twenty-foot sound-baffle wall. Besides, even if Alice could have seen Pearl Harbor from where we stood, it would be an unfamiliar sight to her because the view is now obstructed by extended piers that were built after the war on reclaimed land from the harbor, including the reclaimed land under U.S.S. Arizona Memorial National Park.
Alice and I got back in the car. Our thoughts were that if we could locate Admiral Kimmel’s home, then we could determine where Momsen’s quarters were in relation to it. We drove down Makalapa Drive and parked in front of the “Admiral Nimitz House” presuming it had been Admiral Kimmel’s home in 1941. We climbed the steep hill next to the house.
At 83, Alice’s stride was strong and easy, and she kept a brisk pace to the top of the hill. From the crest, she turned and looked in the direction of Pearl Harbor. From our vantage point we could see over the cluster of two-story beige clapboard homes. Alice cupped her hands over her sunglasses. “No, this isn’t right either,” she said. We strolled for another twenty minutes, but never figured out where Commander Momsen’s home was. Our conclusion was that it was time for lunch.
The dining room of the Sam Snead Restaurant at the Navy-Marine Golf Course was filled with military men and women in uniform, civilian workers, golfers and mothers with young children. I noticed Alice looking over at a table of young officers.
“Yes, they are young,” I said to her, as if reading her mind.
She smiled.
“Weren’t you nineteen years old when you married your Chris?” I asked her; it was more of a statement than a question.
She nodded. “Maybe that’s why I was never afraid anything would happen to him—I was too young to think otherwise.”
I asked Alice how long Chris was stationed in Hawaii before he was sent to the Pacific Theatre. “Not long,” she answered.
“What about Christmas? Was he home then?” I asked.
“The second Christmas?” She paused as if to recall the holiday and I realized she meant the second Christmas that the country was at war.
“Yes, he was home. It was our first Christmas as a married couple. We tried to make the best of it. There was no Christmas Tree Ship that year, so Chris made our tree out of scrap wood. He nailed a two by four to a wood platform, then drilled holes in the two by four and we collected Norfolk pine branches and stuck them in the holes—that was our tree.”
“What about stollen?” I asked.
“No stollen or springerle,” she answered. “The ingredients used to make them were too hard to come by. Citron and cardamom were luxuries. I didn’t mind, though.” Her answer surprised me because she had written an article about her childhood Christmases filled with German traditions and her mother’s fruitcake, stollen and springerle.
“The commissary had just basic items. Sometimes the shelves were bare. They weren’t like they are now, like grocery stores. In 1942 the commissary I went to was a warehouse at the dock and you bought what was available. Bread was one cent a loaf and a can of peas was six cents. Fresh produce wasn’t always offered and the only meat we could buy was ‘mystery meat.’ The wives stood in line at the butcher counter and we were handed a chunk of meat. We didn’t know what it was. I assumed it was either beef or pork since I didn’t want to consider other alternatives. And cooking it! That was a challenge. If I didn’t have a pressure cooker Chris and I would have ground our teeth down to our gums.” She continued, “You never knew what was going to be there. When Mike was a baby I never knew what brand formula would be there. I couldn’t imagine there were so many brands of formula, but he seemed to be fine with them and he didn’t have any allergies.”
I told Alice I read her article about Mike being born at St. Louis Hospital and asked her if she wanted to order a plate of pigs feet for lunch—it was an inside joke. Then I asked her what St. Louis Hospital was like.
Alice said, “The official name of the hospital was the 147th General Hospital, but I’m not sure how many people remember that. Almost everyone called it St. Louis Hospital because the Army took over St. Louis College and turned it into a medical facility for military families. It’s hard to imagine, but Tripler Hospital, as we know it, had not been built then and the hospital at Pearl Harbor was used for war casualties.
“During the early years of the war, all Oahu hospitals were crowded and, as a military wife, I went to St. Louis to have my baby. Half of the second floor of one building was designated for pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, with one large ward for new mothers. I remember there were twenty of us in the room—ten beds on each side of the room. Each bed had curtains around it for privacy.
“When Mike was born, on September 10, 1943, my mother was still on the mainland and Chris was on Howland and Baker Islands. When I went into labor, my father drove me to the hospital and dropped me off with a cheery, ‘Everything will be just fine. I’ll see you later’ and he left. Men didn’t get involved with births in those days. My cousin’s wife Margaret stayed with me for most of my labor, but even with Margaret with me, I felt all alone.
“Mother had been stranded on the mainland since May of 1943 when she had gone to Wisconsin to celebrate her parents’ 60th wedding anniversary. She thought she could just pop back to Hawaii after her visit. But she couldn’t book passage home; ships were still transporting troops as a priority and she didn’t return until April 1944.
“After twenty-eight hours of being in labor, I remember the doctors ‘putting me to sleep’ to have the baby. When I woke up I was in the ward. I was all alone with no news about my baby. I had no idea if it was a girl, boy, if ‘it’ was healthy, how much it weighed or what ‘it’ looked like. I asked a few nurses about my baby, but giving me information didn’t seem to be a priority. They had just completed a shift change and none of the new nurses knew about my baby. I often wondered if the doctors and nurses on the ward were disappointed that they were not out on the front lines with the soldiers.
“Finally, one nurse took pity on me and found out that I had a healthy son, but I still had to wait until the scheduled feeding time before I saw him. When they brought him to me, he had his hair curled in a kewpie-doll twist on the top of his head. I unfolded his blanket to get a look at him. He had all his fingers and toes.
“And the pigs feet?” I egged her on.
She made a sour face. “I was looking forward to a good meal the night Mike was born. I hadn’t eaten in almost two days, but when the meal came it was pigs feet and potato salad. That wasn’t my idea of a celebration meal. I had never eaten pigs feet before and I wasn’t going to start the day I gave birth—I still haven’t tried it and I doubt I ever will. The good thing was that in the 1940’s you stayed in the hospital a respectable ten days to recover from childbirth. A few days after I got home, Chris got back to Hawaii from Howland & Baker Islands. He was home for seven months, and then he left for Tarawa, Saipan, Makin Atoll, the Marianas, and the Gilbert Islands.”
Soon after Chris left, Alice’s mother returned from the mainland and Alice spent time with her parents in Manoa. She and her mother joined the American Red Cross Gray Ladies organization and volunteered time at Hickam Field working in the canteen, serving donuts to the airmen.
Alice said, “I volunteered throughout the war years. I even ventured into light opera. I tried out for a production of The Mikado and was cast in the chorus. Maurice Evans was the star—during the war he was a major in the Army stationed in Honolulu. He was attached to the Entertainment Section.”
Alice explained how she had become a part of the cast. “I took singing lessons from Peggy Hitchcock at Punahou.4 She was asked to play a lead role in The Mikado and when Major Evans asked if she knew any girls who she thought would be good for minor roles, she asked me to audition. My mother said she would take care of Mike for me, so I tried out and was given a role in the chorus. Most of the men in the cast were servicemen who had theatre experience, but there were some professionals from the community, and, of course, Maurice Evans. It was a wonderful experience. We toured all over the island. We started with a one month engagement at the University of Hawaii theatre which was convenient for me because my parents lived nearby on Hyde Street in Manoa. After that, we took the show on the road to different bases and camps. They had big buses that would pick us up. We went everywhere, even to camps in the boonies and we one night in February 1945 at the Maluhia.”5
Alice said that for the most part during the war her time revolved around being a mother and trying to keep life as normal as possible. She doesn’t have any particular memories of the day the war ended. “I wasn’t downtown celebrating in the streets, and I wasn’t part of any parade…I don’t remember the day, exactly. Chris was in Seattle, Washington—he was part of a staff that was planning for a land invasion of Japan. I do remember the date. It was August 31—Chris’s birthday. Victory in Europe Day was on May 8, my birthday.”
When Chris returned home after the war, he and Alice finally had their honeymoon. They went to Kiluea Military Camp on the Big Island—and took their three year old son, Mike with them.6
Chris and Alice built a home in Kahala where Alice still lives. When they bought their home, it was a perfectly-sized bungalow for their family. Over the years, it has been expanded several times and now accommodates three generations of the Sorensen family, including daughters Cathy and Susie, and Susie’s family.
The Sorensen home is comfortable and sprawling and decorated with loving memories collected over the years. On the piano there are several photos of Chris and Alice, of their children and grandchildren. Alice showed me a portrait of Chris. He looked to be about forty years old. “We were married just short of fifty-four years when Chris died,” she said.
Chris Sorensen died on January 30, 1996 from complications of Alzheimer’s disease.
For most of his life, Christian Sorensen was a professional artist. He carved monkey pod wood bowls, sculptures, and bas relief. On the living room wall in Alice’s home is Chris’s sculpture of St. Peter; on the piano is one of his carved lotus bowls. Most of Chris’s works are in private collections.
Alice walked me to her front door past one of Chris’s carvings. He had sculpted a bas relief of monstera leaves on a panel next to the door. We stopped at the ceramic urn next to the wooden gate in front of her house. The urn was filled with water lilies. “They’re my favorite flower,” she reminded me and I conjured a vision of Alice as a nineteen-year old bride, carrying a bouquet of cascading water lilies proudly escorted by her 2nd Lieutenant groom.
Women of World War II Hawaii
