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Autobiography of George Kalakahi Kalehua All the holiday celebrations having been concluded and routine work and school activities commencing, nanny Elizabeth Kalehua Ah Sing was conceived by a visiting nephew of Martha Katie Kalani Stevens Smith at Mahukona, Hawaii. When the apparent condition became more prominent, she resigned her nanny-ship and moved to Honolulu, and lived with her great grandaunt Peke Kainapaukaumakaole. All attempts vities commencing, nanny Elizabeth Kalehua Ah Sing was conceived by a visiting nephew of Martha Katie Kalani Stevens Smith at Mahukona, Hawaii. When the apparent condition became more prominent, she resigned her nanny-ship and moved to Honolulu, and lived with her great grandaunt Peke Kainapaukaumakaole. All attempts vities commencing, nanny Elizabeth Kalehua Ah Sing was conceived by a visiting nephew of Martha Katie Kalani Stevens Smith at Mahukona, Hawaii. When the apparent condition became more prominent, she resigned her nanny-ship and moved to Honolulu, and lived with her great grandaunt Peke Kainapaukaumakaole. All attempts for fathership was not acknowledged, when I was born on July 30, 1917. At the advice of Aunt Peke, I was named George after her husband and ancestral lineages of Kalakahi and Kalehua. Henceforth, I am George Kalakahi Kalehua. The Kainapaukaumakaole home was on then the Asylum Road in the back of the Kaumakapili Church, in the Palama area of Honolulu. Mother went to work for the American Can Company next to the Hawaiian Pineapple Cannery and other places while living in Honolulu. During my early childhood days, I would ride with Uncle George as he drive the back horse driven carriage taxi in town. After great grandaunt Halua Kalehua Komaia died and widower John Komaia got old, requested mother to inherit the Kokoiki homestead of which we did move back to Kohala. We stayed at Mahukona and were housed in the Japanese camp for economic circumstances until great granduncle John died. The interesting part of the Japanes camp was the community Japanese furo bathhouse. In the meantime, the homestead land was leased to a cane planter, the Yara family. A new home was built to replace the old Komoaia home. The Kokoiki Branch of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints was in existence. At the lower corner of the Kailikini property stood the chapel building. Christmas celebration at the chapel with a large fir tree with live lit-candles and decorations and garlands at midnight of the 24th. In the early evening, all the children of the Lincoln Bell and Stevens Ohana and guests had a sleeping party at the Kailikini home. At another occasion, I went riding on a homemade wheelbarrow wheels wagon with the Lincoln brothers and sisters. While wheeling down the hill road near the Kailikini home in Kokoiki, I fell off the wagon when the wagon rammed over the wooden bridge. I broke my shoulder collar bone. I was treated by herbal lapaau for five weeks by Mrs. Kaaihue of Mahukon. At the age of eight, prior to my birthday party Elder William Holding baptized me in the plantation reservoir next to the Hawi Camp 17. On the night of my fifteenth birthday, mother gave birth to my twin brothers, Alfonso Samson and Joseph Kalehua. Then, William C. Smith Jr. had acquired a homestead land at Kokoiki. Hence, Mrs. Smith moved her teaching job from Mahukona to Kokoiki. I attended the Kokoiki School until the end of my second grade, after which the Kokoiki School was abandoned and all to go to Honomaka’u Elementary School. There at the time there was no school bus transportation, so we walked to Honomaka’u, which was about three miles. While at the Kokoiki School, there was a garden farm. We all looked forward to Friday’s lunch as sweet potatoes were harvested and cooked, and ate with salted salmon and dried opai(shrimp), Friday’s treat. In the mean-time, mother got acquainted with John Mithchell-Juan Melchor and they got married, we lived a year of two at the Mahukona Hawaiian Camp. Later, we moved back to live on the Kokoiki homestead. Since I had to walk to and from home to the Honomaka’u Elementary School, I had many neighboring Japanese schoolmates on the way home. On the way home after school all of them stayed at the Hawi Japanese school for classes, to begin at 3:30pm. We played homemade rag ball baseball before classes. As I was to walk home alone, when Japanese classes commenced, the schoolmates influenced me to attend the classed with them. I did so for several years, doing reading and writing and attending ceremonies. One day at Honomaka’u Elementary School, before classes started in the morning, I was trying to remove a pinecone stuck in the reel of the push lawnmower, a fellow schoolmate pushed the mower. My middle finger of my right hand was injured and was stitched. Since then that middle finger has been a bit deformed with a split fingernail. When the Great Depression struck the nation, the sugar plantation discontinued the harvesting contract with all the cane planters at the Kokoiki homestead. We then utilized the land to truck farming of corn, watermelon, sweet potatoes, irish potatoes, and peanuts. Including planting, caring, harvesting, and marketing. We also raised pigs, chickens, and rabbits for domestic use and also fighting cocks, roosters for sale. Since there was no electricity available, we relied on kerosene lamps and lanterns, stove and oven and charcoal iron. Also, having no indoor toilet plumbing, an outhouse was used and a separate bathouse. Since there was no cesspool, all water ran off from the kitchen and bathhouse were into the yard ditches lined with Hawaiian varieties of sugar cane and banana. Laundering was done by hand with the wooden washboard in the separate bathhouse. Piped water was available in the kitchen and bath and laundry houses. Every Sunday, late afternoon we always looked forward for the traveling grocery wagon. We bought flavored ice cakes, which we ate with evaporated milk. On many Fridays and Saturday nights, I accompanied my stepfather on fishing trips to the Haena-Honoipu area. First, we’d catch puhi(eel) for bait that would be attached to the hook on the line from a pole wedged at the edge of the ocean cliff. The baited hook would be dangling in the ocean and with a bell attached at the top of the pole, an ulua(crevalle/jack) when a strike would be notified. In the meantime, pole fishing for mu(bigeye/emperor), u’u(menpache soldier) and upapalu(cardinal). On one occasion, a fieldtrip hike of 15 miles starting from the Pololu Valley lookout up to and along the Kohala Ditch to Honokane and Awini intakes and back down along the seacoast. At another camp at Hawaii Volcano National Park hiking down the Kilauea Iki Crater which years later erupted and filled the crater. When I entered the seventh grade, we then had the largest ever, of four classes of thirty or more students. But this situation dwindled down to two classes in the ninth grade when each student was assessed ten dollars a year to attend school. By the time I graduated from high school, my graduation class composed of only twenty-four students, the Kohala High School class of 1936. The boys wore black suits while the girls wore white gowns which they made from rice and sugar sacks. During my high school years, early morning or home study seminary was not available, but religious class periods were offered, on a release time at school. While in high school, I participated in many extra-curricular activities. The Hi-Y Club always had conventions at different school locations throughout the state during Thanksgiving weekend, while the Future Farmers of America held the conventions during the Easter vacation, and at times joined with the girls Future Homemakers. In sports, I participated in the varsity volleyball, basketball, and track and field events. At the agriculture course of study, an extra activity was offered by the plantation to cultivate twenty acres of sugar cane land with labor payments to be given to the Future Farmers convention fund. This experience helped me get into the plantation sugar cane experiment division, after I graduated from high school, where I was employed for two years. To supplement my junior and senior years in high school, I was permitted to be out of school and go to the Mahukona Port Terminal to labor loading sugar bags when the mainland sugar ships were in port, for four or five days. After graduating from high school and was employed by the plantation, I moved to live at the plantation boarding houses in Hawi, more accessible. With the closing of the Civil Conservation Corp. at Waimea, many of the young men came to work for the Kohala Sugar Co. and housed at the Hawi Boading House with large kitchen and dining room buildings, surrounded by quadplex cottages. There were also two tennis courts and a large gymnasium. With al these young men, a senior basketball team was formed and participated with the community league and became of champion caliber. During one of the games, I fractured my deformed middle finger and was out of work for a month while having a banjo sling, thus terminating my work with the experiment division. When I got back to working ability, I worked on the sugar cane transporting train from the fields to the mill. During early 1940, the United States government was going to federalize and activate the entire state national-guard unit for a year prior to drafting all young men at the beginning of 1941.

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