Whenever I do an interview, there is always that breathless moment when I am surprised. Sometimes I’m surprised by the retelling of an act of heroism or by the courage to withstand tragedy. But there are often times when I’m stopped in my tracks by the casual mention of an historic figure. During an interview with Auntie Nona Beamer, she mentioned periodically meeting “Eleanor” in New York City and visiting children in the projects. Yes, it was “that” Eleanor—Eleanor Roosevelt.
When I interviewed Grace Santos, the mother of my dear friend Sharlene Silva, she mentioned “the smart woman who was deaf and blind” who visited her school. Yes, it was Helen Keller, and Grace’s school was the Hawaii School for the Deaf.
Grace has a unique perspective on the war experience; she is profoundly deaf and uses sign language as her primary communication.
On the morning of December 7, 1941, Grace woke up early to attend classes for becoming a Catholic at St. Augustine Church in Waikiki. “The bus was empty,” Grace recalls. “The bus driver was talking to me and talking more, but I didn’t understand what he was saying, then I got to church and the nun there signed to me. She told me there was a war and I should go home and that classes were cancelled.”
When she got home, Grace, her mother and sisters went outside. From their backyard they could see the Japanese planes flying toward the Windward side of the island. “I lived on 7th Avenue in Kaimuki, so I didn’t see as much as Alex.”Alex was Alex Nunes Santos, her fiancé. Alex and Grace were fellow students at the Territorial School for the Deaf and Blind. “We saw each other all day,” Grace signed. “But it was years before he made his move.” Then, one day when Alex saw Grace downtown; he asked her to go to the zoo with him—that was in the summer of 1941. The couple was married on October 2, 1943.
Grace signed, “Alex told me that on the morning of the attack he walked down from his house to the Pali Long’s. He told me he knew he shouldn’t be watching the attack, but he was curious. He said he saw the planes flying toward Pearl Harbor and saw the smoke from the attack. And he also saw an open truckload of men, injured and dead, going up to Queen’s Hospital.”
Grace remembers she wasn’t afraid. “I don’t know why I wasn’t afraid,” she signed. “I just wasn’t.”
It has to be noted that the impact of the war on Grace was unique. Her father, a Japanese national, was dead, therefore there was no threat of him being interned. She lived in a household of women, and the young men she knew were her classmates at the school for the deaf and were ineligible to join the military.
“During the war, many of the boys worked in the House of Monkey Pod and carved wood things,” Grace recalls. “A few got jobs at the bases. They hired deaf men to work where it was very loud and no hearing-men could be.”She remembers spending long nights sitting in a darkened home with her mother and sisters. “If there were any cracks where there was light escaping we got fined,” she said. “We ate in the dark, then we would sit in the living room in dark. The windows were blacked-out. They listened to the radio.” And Grace just sat there.
“During the war we ate vegetables, we grew in our own garden and we raised chickens. My grandmother would take the chicken and swing it around by its neck until the neck snapped then she would chop off its head. She would drain the chicken in a tub, then put it in boiling water then pull off the feathers. I can still see that.”
I asked Grace about her courtship during the war years and she told me that she and Alex would go to the movies, or to the Natatorium. “I was a good swimmer,” she signed. Then she told me that there were Friday night movies at the Territorial School for the Deaf and Blind. The school had dances (yes, dances), a social club, bowling club, and a community newspaper. In fact, at the beginning of the war, the Territorial School for the Deaf and Blind was a thriving community. The school had two dormitories for the deaf. “One for the boys and one for the girls,” Grace signed. Each of these dormitories had a capacity for 48 students. There were also six classrooms in three cottages, an infirmary with six beds, a shop building, a laundry, an administration building, a library; dining room and kitchen. (The average enrollment during this period was 80 deaf students and 15 blind.)
Grace worked in the dining hall at the school even though she never learned to cook. She recalls, “I learned how to weave, how to sew but never how to cook.”
Once the war began, Grace recalls many students leaving the residential school. She speculated that it was because their parents wanted them home with them where they knew they would be safe. “And many of the older students left school to get work,” she said.
Unlike other private and public schools, the Territorial School for the Deaf and Blind was not leased or taken over by the military government. Actually, no government agency took over any part of the campus, nor were students forced to be put on a split-shift schedule. The principal of the school at the time was Mr. Sam Palmer. He wrote, “Throughout the first year of war the school has had full use of the buildings and grounds on Leahi Avenue. As a residence school for seriously handicapped children, however, the blackouts, rising costs of food, travel difficulties and the loss of trained teachers have presented problems of unusual difficulty.”
With the outbreak of war, the number of residents at the school dropped from 84 in 1939-1940 to 77 the following year.
“It was a very nice school,” Grace said and indeed it was. The Territorial School for the Deaf and Blind (now the Hawaii School for the Deaf and Blind) is located at the foot of Diamond Head on the former estate of Cecil Brown, Attorney General for Hawaii in the 1890’s. During the time of the war, the school had a large main building with two narrow porches covered by stephanotis, along its side and front were banana plants. To the left and right of the administration building were the dormitories, and beyond them were two small school buildings of two rooms each. The cafeteria was a large gray building where all the meals were served. But the most charming building on campus was a small flat-roofed cottage covered with wood vine where the principal lived.
Alex and Grace socialized almost exclusively with school friends. When Alex told his school friends about his romance with Grace, he’d tell people, “It was like the bombs in Pearl Harbor, bursting in air!”
During the war, Grace went to school and worked, “half-half.” The sisters at St. Augustine’s helped her get work as a seamstress at Paradise Sportswear. “It was long hours on my feet,” Grace remembers. “My first job there was to press the garments.”
As Grace remembers, Paradise Sportswear was “upstairs on the second floor above the Liberty Theatre. They had about fifty people working there, mixed both hearing and deaf. Most of what they made were Aloha shirts. All the service men were buying Aloha shirts.
I worked from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.” she said. After work, she volunteered rolling bandages and assembling gas masks.
Grace remembers the crowded buses on the way to and from work. The buses were “filled with a mix of local residents and military men.” She also remembers the long lines for food, gas, and going to the movies. “Alex and I would go to Queen Theatre on dates,” she signed. “And the lines were two blocks long sometimes.”
The couple dated for the first two years of the war, then married in October 1943. Grace’s wedding dress, a “ready-made” gown from Ritz, was a gift from her sister. She carried a bouquet of orchids with cascading pikake and her wedding reception, like so many of the times, was small and held at the house, and of course, it was a day wedding because people had to get home before curfew.
Alex’s and Grace’s lives went on routinely. They worked, volunteered in the war effort and met friends from the Deaf Club—often at Kapiolani Park. The photo of the club is at Alex and Grace’s first wedding anniversary party. The couple shared fifty-seven years together before Alex passed away on December 19, 2002. (For most of his life, Alex, as so many deaf men did and do now, worked making ukuleles for Kamaka Ukulele. Grace continued as a seamstress at Wells and Shaheen’s for awhile, but spent most of her life raising her children.)
Grace continues to meet with her deaf friends. On some Saturday mornings, you’ll find a group of older deaf friends at the food court at Ala Moana—sharing stories, laughing and then going shopping. Grace just may be one of them.
NOTES:
Photo Captions:From left to right is Raymond Tatsuta, saying A and L, Grace Santos saying O and H and Henry Tatsuta saying A. Others at the party were: Paul Sugita, Harne Shirai, Richard Hokama, Riyiyi Takenaka, Robert Sato, John L. Kaonohilani, Jennie Lowe, Moon Yun Choy, William Motta, Ryochi Narikawa, Loretta Lamadora, Mrs. H. Tatsuta, Alex Santos, Dorothy Nagasawa, Dorothy English, Mrs. M. Broxson, Mr and Mrs. Duane Wright, Suichi Honda, Ben Uesugi, Marian Sugita.
Grace’s wedding; Grace and Alex’s first wedding anniversary party at Kapiolani Park.
Notes on the Hawaii School for the Deaf and Blind from Territory of Hawaii, Report of Superintendent, 1941, 1942, pp. 24-25; Honolulu Star-Bulletin, May 9, 1945, p 9; Honolulu Star-Bulletin June 4, 1944, p.2; Honolulu Advertiser December 23, 1943, p. 3;
Honolulu Advertiser, October 18, 1943.
Photo Credits. Photo of Helen Keller, National Archives. All other photos in the personal collection of Grace Santos. Caption on Helen Keller photo reads: Lucy Mabel, principal and Helen Keller and Miss Thompson her secretary and companion.
