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, about half-mile away.

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 emigrated 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.”

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 shows a skinny-five year old Alice, wearing a short dress, her hands clasped in front of her. She squints, smiling at the camera.

Behind Alice is 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 are inspecting the plane. To the right of the plane, is the only woman in the photograph. She is 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.”

PHOTO: Courtesy of Alice H. Sorensen
For more information on the flight of the Bird of Paradise, please see: http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=3239