I am posting some of the diary of Juanita Vitousek and I ask that you consider her remarks in the context of 1940's and consider the sociological conditions of the time. Her remarks are an honest observation of the time. She begins her diary with this sentence,"We can't phone, cable or even write you. I want you to know all about us, so I will write a daily account."
Here are some excerpts from her diary:After Sunday's raid on Pearl Harbor. Two thousand, five hundred men have been buried in 13 long trenches in Nuuanu Cemetery — more at Red Hill.... Sunday morning the Garden Club stripped their gardens of flowers and decorated the long graves."
Let's give a face to one of those men buried that day. The "man" is typical of the age of those killed.
Thomas Hembree ~ 1924 - 1941
Thomas Hembree was born 1924 in Kennewick, Benton County, Washington, USA. He died December 7, 1941 in Honolulu, Honolulu County, Hawaii, USA
United States Navy Seaman Apprentice. Killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7, 1941. Two days later, Hembree, of Kennewick, Wash., a 17-year-old crewman on the seaplane tender USS Curtis, was buried as an unknown in the civilian Nuuanu Cemetery in Honolulu. He and another sailor were exhumed in 1947 for identification but Hembree's remains were returned to his grave still unidentified. His remains were transferred to National Memorial in 1949. He was disinterred again in January 2001, and specialists at the Army's Central Identification Laboratory-Hawaii used dental records and a skeletal analysis of his remains to identify him. He was reburied with full military honors on March 5. 2001.
Back to Juanita's Diary:
Dec. 18: "Everything seems to be frozen, but why one can buy only one lipstick is more than I can see. What, I wonder, does the Army need of them?"
• Dec. 19: "No Christmas trees! I'm going to get a strawberry guava bush from Tantalus and plant it in a tub.... Cooking note: if you have never tried to get a large, hearty breakfast in the pitch dark, try it. Fry bacon and eggs with a dim blue flashlight in one hand!"
• Dec. 21: "The first week of the war the food situation looked acute. Homeowners were urged to make gardens, but the military government froze the seeds. So a Japanese truck gardener in Palolo Valley offered several thousand lettuce plants, two weeks ago, to anyone who wanted them, free. We got three dozen."
all."
• Dec. 27: "I was much annoyed today to learn that Navy wives are getting 40 gallons of gas if their husbands are in and 20 if they are at sea. While the civilians who are doing the work of this place can get only 10 unless their work is directly for defense."
PHOTO: Juanita Vitousek; Garden Club decorated the graves at Nuuanu on January 1, 1942; Thomas Hembree.
1 comments:
As a teen ager my mother worked as a maid (13 years) for Juanita Vitousek and her family, including that early morning when Mrs. Vitousek received that phone call from her husband Roy, telling her that the island was under attack by Japanese aircraft. In her diary my mother is mentioned as Miyako. Roy Viitousek asked his wife to move their family to their second home up on the hills of Tantalus, where my mother, Saito (the gardner) and Mrs. Juanita Vitousek witnessed the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
In 1977 Juanita Vitousek met me at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, where I was having my first solo art exhibit. We still have a beautiful water color that was given to my mother as her wedding gift.
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