When I asked Shim if she truly was “a country girl,” she assured me she certainly was. She said, “I was the eldest of eleven children—eleven of us, two years apart. There wasn’t a day that went by in twenty years that my mother didn’t wash diapers. In the winter, it was cold in Kamuela and she would take us children and would drive to the beach at Kawaihai and hang the diapers to dry on the kiawe trees.” Shim smiled. “My mother was a wise and frugal person. She worked from early morning until late night making tofu, aburage, konnayu, manju and senbei. She grew vegetables and kept chickens and pigs so we always had plenty of food and if there was any burden in providing for us, she and my father never let us children know about it.
“My father was a jack of all trades. He was a plantation worker in the poi fields, a wild-horse rider at the Parker Ranch, a cook. He ran a movie theatre, he had a taxi cab and, he was a self-trained auto mechanic and operated an auto repair garage. He was a very interesting man who enjoyed people. He was gregarious and made friends easily. When I was growing up, there were no hotels or restaurants in or around Kamuela, so if a car broke down on the roads from Kona or Honokaa, my father would invite the driver and passengers to home to eat with us while the car was repaired—even the entertainers were invited.”
Shim remarked that her parents treated each of their eleven children as if he or she were an only child. They all felt that they were treated specially. She continued her story, “My parents sent me to school and gave me an education and I know they suffered, but they never made me aware of it. After sixth grade, I went to school in Hilo where I boarded at the Waianaku Jodo Mission.” It was while she was in Hilo that Shim’s twelve-year old sister, Emiko was dying of pneumonia and she returned home in time to help with the ritual cleansing to prepare her sister for death. Emiko’s death deeply impacted Shim. “My sister’s death increased my awareness of life’s impermanence and the importance of doing one’s best for others each precious, unrepeatable day.” Emiko acceptance of death, and her dying words (left unspoken by Shim) charged the family with caring for others.
After graduated from Hilo High School in 1934, Shim was immediately hired as a school secretary at Kohala High and Elementary School where she also taught a course in office training and filled in as vice-principal. She remained there until August 1941, when she moved to Oahu and worked at the Vocational Education Division of the Department of Public Instruction.
Four months after she moved to Oahu, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor; it was during the school department’s Christmas break. On the morning of December 7, 1941, Shim and her brother Toratsugu were visiting the Yohio family on Waiolo Street. She remembers, “My brother Toratsugu was in the army. It was early in the morning when the next door neighbor, Mrs. Chun, came over and told us there was a war on and that the Japanese attacked. We thought she was fooling us. But then we went outside and I saw the Japanese emblem on the planes and I knew it was true. My brother immediately took his rifle and left for Schofield Barracks. He didn’t leave the base for over a week… during the war he served with the 100th Battalion.”
Shim recalls that she had on her best blue crepe chine dress that morning. “I wore the same dress for at least one or two days. I remember Mr. Yoshio told us to stay in the hallway because it was the safest part of the house. The only other part of the house we went into was the kitchen for food.”
When I asked Shim if Mr. Yoshio was interrogated by the F.B.I., she answered that he was not. She explained, “He was an engineer with the U.S. Engineers at the time.” And when I asked about the Ryusaki family, she said that as far as she knows, no one in her family was questioned.
However, within two days of the attack, the FBI did question and detain 370 Japanese, 98 Germans and 14 Italians. The original interrogation/detention center was at the Immigration Station at Fort Armstrong. In March of 1942, those internees were moved to the Sand Island Detention Center. It was the responsibility of the vice-consul to visit these detention centers, as well as those holding Japanese prisoners of war and to assure that they were meeting the stipulations of the Geneva Convention. But, Gustaf Olson’s role at Queen’s Hospital became all-consuming, and as a result, Shim’s role expanded. Soon Olson’s appearances at the consul were reduced to rushed visits when he reviewed Shim’s work and signed documents. It was she who became the de facto liaison between the Japanese civilian population and the military and was given full diplomatic courtesies. It was she who visited the detention centers and the prisoners of war.
