Random Acts of Heroism

This website celebrates the spontaneous acts of kindness and heroism of “ordinary woman” of Hawaii during World War II. They each offered their best skills.

For some of us, the first impulse is to make food to console and aid: During the first week after the attack, women anonymously brought food to canteens, shelters and hospitals. Police radios announced streams of offers of food and thanks: Coffee, soup and sandwiches at 133 Liliukolani. Come for food. 1069 Ilima Drive; 664 S. King Street is has breakfast ready; Next door to them is giving food for police station meals.

On Oahu, the Salvation Army started serving doughnuts the morning of the attack. They fed volunteer workers, firefighters, police and military family evacuees.
Within hours of the attack, Mrs. A.M. Holbrook (in photo) wife of Salvation Army Major A.M. Holbrook, opened up the new fire station at Wahiawa, got the brand new stove connected, borrowed dishes and kettles, and she and her crew, got out doughnuts by the platter for twenty-four hours a day for four straight days.

Mrs. Holbrook recalls, “There never was a crumb left over. Girl Scouts helped on the night shifts, but I didn’t peel off my clothes for ten days running. I just dropped on a couch for an hour or so of rest then went back to the stove again”

For the duration of the war, Mrs. Holbrook's canteen was established in the Wahiawa Methodist Church. It was open from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. In the first three weeks of operation, 18,000 doughnuts were handed out

(Note: Ten or more persons in Wahiawa were injured when planes strafed the streets of Wahiawa. One of the seventy-five planes that flew over the plantation town crashed into a row of houses; two homes were burned to the ground.)

Some of women, they worked on instinct: The report of the Public Works Officer (Pearl Harbor Yard) for December 15, 1941 reads: “Lieutenant Commander W.D. Chandler, (who occupies government quarters at No. 402 Kuahua Island, near a wharf) with the sole medical assistance of one corpsman, established a field hospital in his quarters, where for a period of approximately two hours he and his wife, Mrs. W.D. Chandler, received and gave first aid treatment to about 100 enlisted personnel from USS Oklahoma and USS West Virginia, many of whom were severely shocked or had sustained burns and some serious injuries."


Some women offered their homes: Mrs. A.A. Fernandez of Mott-Smith Drive put an ad in the paper offering to share her newly built home with someone who was evacuated under the emergency laws. She indicated a preference for needy persons with a baby.

Mrs. Victoria Bates of 3257 Kaimuki Avenue, wife of Gunner’s Mate 1st Class John Buel Bates, USN, was highly praised by the Assistant Executive Secretary of the Army and Navy YMCA. “Mrs. Bates, acting as a volunteer, and assisted by a group of fellow navy wife friends, found homes for 600 women and children in Kapahulu and Kaimuki homes.” Most of these families were navy families evacuated from the Pearl Harbor base.

Some made clothes: The first evacuation center was set up by noon of December 7, 1941 at Hemenway Hall at the University of Hawaii. Some evacuees came with no belongings. A call went out for clothes, especially clothes for children. Mrs. George Angus took it upon herself to sew pajamas for the children.



Some insisted on giving blood: On the morning of December 7, 1941, Governor Frear, his wife, and their Japanese maid were in line to give blood. When a nurse told the former governor, age 78, and his wife, age 72, that they were beyond the 50-year-old maximum age to give blood, Mrs. Frear refused to accept that. “It has to be very good blood,” she said, “It has lasted us a long time!” Her blood was accepted.
PHOTO: Mrs. Holbrook from Hawaii State Archives.

Some just did their jobs: On 7 December 1941, there was a total of eighty-two nurses serving at three Army medical facilities that infamous morning: Tripler Army Hospital, Wahiawa, and Hickam.

Lieutenant Monica E. Conter was on duty at Hickam Field during the attack. “I ran out on the third floor porch overlooking Pearl Harbor. . . I rushed downstairs and received permission from our Commanding Officer to bring the patients down from the higher floors. We were in the elevator when the electricity was cut off and we had to use the trap door to get the patients and ourselves out. All the electric clocks stopped . . . You cannot imagine the noise—aerial torpedoes bombs, machine gunning, our anti-aircraft…In the middle of this we heard the roaring of the planes coming back. One made a thirty-foot crater about twenty-feet from us. ..The next bomb fell across the street . . . smoke and fumes from the bomb came in and someone cried, ‘Gas!’ We all thought the same thing, the bombs didn’t get me but the gas will. Soon afterwards we had our masks and helmets. More casualties came…the wounded were crying for water but we didn’t give them any—we heard it had been poisoned.”

All these women did what they could.

PHOTOS: Salvation Army photo courtesy of Hawaii State Archives; USS Oklahoma courtesy of U.S. Navy; Hemeway Hall courtesy of University of Hawaii Archives; Mrs. Mary Dillingham Frear courtesy of Hawaii State Government.