Lovey Miles James

Everyone in Lovey’s family was involved in the war effort. One of her sisters helped issue identification cards in the basement of Kawaiahao Church, another trained to be a crane operator, and one was a member of the USO’s Flying Squadron.

Lovey’s father, William E. Miles, established the Catholic USO Center at Our Lady of Peace Cathedral. “The Catholic USO was on 1183 Fort Street at the corner of Beretania and Fort Streets,” Lovey said. “These days you can see the cathedral from the street, but back then, there was an arch and a gate and you had to drive in the compound. The entire Columbus Building was set aside for the USO. My father was the director, and Father Winthagen was moderator.

“There was a big bar room at the end of the building facing Beretania Street.” Lovey said. “That’s where we held the dances. Downstairs was a game room, billiards room, and a check-in service where servicemen could leave bags and packages while they spent the day in Honolulu. The second floor of the building was the reading room and library. On the third floor was the CYO gym that my father arranged to be available to service men.”

On weekdays, the Catholic USO hosted about 60 servicemen, on the weekends there were several hundred. (This gym was the site of the boxing matches the young men at the Cherry Blossom Saimin Stand were to fight. See: February 2, 2009 article in HawaiiReporter.com)

Lovey was active in the USO effort. She helped her father set up the USO library where servicemen not only read, but wrote letters home. She helped with the paperwork, and she modeled for fashion shows held at the USO. (Watamull’s donated the clothes.)

“Eleanor Roosevelt visited the Catholic USO, Lovey said. “When she did, I shook Mrs. Roosevelt’s hand. She visited everywhere she could. She seemed to be shy and nervous with people. She had on her grey Red Cross uniform and when she talked she stood with one foot in front of the other and rocked back and forth.”

Lovey expressed admiration for Mrs. Roosevelt and listed some of the places the First Lady visited in Hawaii—Makalapa, Pearl, all the Red Cross stations. The list was long. However, Lovey’s trust of the government was not without skepticism. “I still believe Roosevelt (President Franklin D. Roosevelt) knew about the attack. The summer before the war started, the Office of Civil Defense cleaned out the revetment behind Roosevelt High School. (Roosevelt High School was named for President Theodore Roosevelt.) We used to have air raid drills there….I don’t know, there were just too many signs that we were going to go to war.” When I asked Lovey how, at sixteen years old, she was so aware of the threat. She speculated, “Maybe I was more tuned in because my father was involved with the military. He was in the Army Reserve stationed at Schofield Barracks and worked on the building of the Kolekole Pass.”

When I commented to Lovey that it seemed she spent a lot of time at the USO at Our Lady Queen of Peace, she agreed. “But, I didn’t go to dances there,” she said. “I went to the Maluhia to dance.”

“I worked at Ford Island from seven a.m. to four p.m. and went straight from there to the dances at the Maluhia—it was across the street from Fort De Russy. At first the dances ended at 6 p.m. for curfew, then 8 p.m., then 10.”

The Maluhia was the most popular recreation center in Honolulu. According to Mabel Johnson, the Maluhia’s director, “Sometimes ten thousand men would pass through the club on a weekend night. In our first eight months we had 285,245 guests. And the night Bob Hope appeared, there were 24,700 service men at the club. Each one was comfortably seated on a blade of grass.”

I told Lovey what I read about the night Bob Hope was at the Maluhia, and she said, “It must be a story. I can’t imagine how they could get 24,000 people on the grounds—but maybe.” She cocked her head and raised her eyebrows. “I do remember that the night Bob Hope was there, no beer drinking was allowed.”

The Maluhia was a two-story building with broad lanai. The walls of the dance auditorium were decorated with plywood silhouettes in island motif. The second story balcony, opening to the lanai, overlooked the dance floor. And out on the ground floor lanai, hundreds of service men sat at tables and enjoyed a beer—the dance pavilion was strictly for dancing no beer was allowed. Interestingly, the second floor balcony and lanai were advertised for parents who would like to watch the dances. When I mentioned that to Lovey she confirmed that. “But parents never came,” she said.

“They had all the Big Bands there—Bob Crosby, the Peepers, Artie Shaw. That’s where I danced with Caesar Romero. I saw this guy, kind of funny looking all by himself and felt sorry for him. Besides, looked like a good dancer. I asked him to dance. He was very shy but he was a great dancer, we had a crowd around us. I didn’t know who he was, but then all of a sudden we attracted attention and the Shore Patrol came and carted him off. He wasn’t supposed to draw attention to himself.


“I went out with Claude Thornhill a few times, too.” She stopped and looked at me. “You don’t know who he is, do you?” I admitted I didn’t. “He was Artie Shaw’s piano player,” she said, “but he didn’t dance. He told me musicians don’t dance because their timing is different; the tempo is different to dance than to play music.”

I commented that when she talked about dancing, her eyes lit up and she smiled. “It was what we did then and I was good at it. It was all fun. One of my favorite places to dance was the Richardson Recreation Center. It made me feel like I was on a ship, because part of the building was cantilevered and below it is a swimming pool. But I also worked hard,” she assured me.

“I was in Navy Aviation Supply in Procurement and Purchasing; I didn’t do any assembly or repair. I worked in the office. Because of the rhythm of the fiscal year, every July it was dead. The military signed new contracts then, so there was nothing for us to do. So they would send me to Communications Department that included work on the newspaper, The Ford Islander or I would help on the Bond Rally projects.

“But, most of the time I was in the Aviation Supply Department. I would do airplane inventories. I did it for all the planes at Ford Island and all the bummed up planes that came off the aircraft carriers. They put those planes in the revetments. The two most important items we handled in inventory was the “black box” and the medical kits. These days, everybody knows what a black box is, back then, they didn’t. It was loaded with sensitive information because you have a whole squadron. Theoretically, they are talking to each other, and you can hear all of it and what the bombers and pilots were saying to each other. But the first thing we had to get out of the plane was the first aid kit because it had morphine in it—either if the crew was hurt or they wanted to…you know…instead of getting captured alive, they could use the morphine.”

Although Lovey’s future husband Henry James, also worked on the “aviation-side” (He was as a mechanic in the hangar.) she didn’t meet him while working; she met him on her lunchtime strolls. “He would always be there—sitting under a tree—every lunch time—under the same tree. And he’d say, ‘Hi, girls.’ I was seventeen at the time.

“Pretty soon, we went to the cafeteria together. I knew most of his friends already. My husband made friends easily—with every type of people. One of his good friends was ‘Sonny’ Sundstrom.”
Sonny Sundstrom, (Hanley P. Sundstrom) owned Kau Kau Korner Drive-In. It was on the corner of Kapiolani and Kalakaua Avenue. It was open 24 hours a day, even during the war, through curfews and blackouts. Tradition has it that his wife sewed the blackout curtains for the windows from sailors’ old blue denim bell bottoms.
What most World War II vets (and old time residents of Oahu) remember about the drive-in was the Kau Kau sign with posts showing you how far you stood from cities all over the world.
“We’d go to Kau Kau Drive-In a lot,” Lovey said. “And Sonny always came by and talked to us, no matter how busy it was.”
Lovelina “Lovey” Miles and Henry Robert James were married on June 13, 1944. She was 19 years old, Henry just turned 21. They had a small a small ceremony at the courthouse and after the ceremony the men went off to the Royal Annex Bar on Hotel St. but the women didn’t. The women couldn’t get in because they were underage so they went to the Hawaii Theatre and saw Sonia Henie in Ice Land because they heard the Hawaiian War Chant was sung in the move.
Lovey and Henry moved to the mainland after the war. They had three children—two boys and a girl. One son was killed in a plane crash at the age of 24.
In July of 1999 they returned to Hawaii to retire. They were both “going home.” Just after they returned, Henry became ill, entered the hospital and within ten days he passed away. Lovey's family was able give her support.
When we were just about ready to finish up the interview, Lovey asked me how I got interested in World War II in Hawaii. I told her my interest was sparked the first time I heard the story of Gussie Ornellas losing two children, a brother, and a cousin to anti-aircraft shrapnel when it landed on her house in Kalihi.

“I knew the family,” Lovey said. “I had First Communion with one of the boys. Yes.” She nodded. “They lived up Kalihi Valley, right?” I told her that was correct.

“I think we played together sometimes, although I don’t know which one I played with. There were so many kids who came to my house. I think one of the Lopes boys would come over. When we were kids we would have neighborhood plays at my house. Kids would bring pennies and my mother would make them lunch.” Lovey smiled. “It was a time when everyone knew everyone else, and if you got in trouble, your family knew it before you got home. There were good times then,” she said. “Good times.”

Even, now, through loss and illness, Lovey believes, “And these are the good times, too.”

Photo Credits: Lovey Miles James at 21, personal collection. Photo: USO models at Catholic CYO left to right are: Geraldine Shover, Evelyn Perry, Betty Spence and Marion Brisette, models. Sportswear shown was lent by Watumull's East India Store. Photo courtesy of Hawaii War Records Depository. Photo: Claude Thornhill, courtesy Department of the Navy. Photo: Kau Kau Korners, courtesy Hawaii War Records Depository.