For Tsunami Awareness Month in Hawaiʻi, we're marking the anniversary of the deadliest tsunami to strike the islands in modern times.
On April 1, 1946, an 8.6 magnitude earthquake off the Aleutian Islands triggered a massive wave that killed nearly 160 people.
As part of our continuing project with the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa's Center for Oral History, ethnic studies professor Ty Kāwika Tengan introduces two survivors who describe that day. If you listen to the recordings, you may need to listen carefully due to their age.
Bunji Fujimoto, the son of an independent sugarcane grower in Laupāhoehoe, recalls the receding ocean and surge of the tidal wave on the peninsula that claimed the lives of teachers and fellow students, including his younger brother. He was born in Nīnole on March 22, 1930, to parents originally from Hiroshima, Japan.
FUJIMOTO: On a Monday morning, was April 1, we got on the bus, same as usual. The guys in the front of the bus started, "Eh, no water in the ocean, no water in the ocean!" They all excited. I said, "What, no water in the ocean? April Fool's," we're saying. We always sitting in the back. "April Fool, April Fool!" "No," they said, ''not April Fool." They kept insisting, so we looked out, and sure enough, we saw the water pulling out, but it was unusual, something different. We walked down and then we were watching the waves start coming in. A lot of students out in the park area and out by the edge of the ocean. I think some of them said they went walking down to the shoreline. Myself, I told some people, "Let's go down, take a look. We were watching, and so the waves had pulled out, the water pulled out quite a bit, and that preceded the next wave. We could see that the ocean was kind of bare. Then the waves started coming back in. They realized before us that the wave wasn't normal, was too big. So they started running. Because by then, you could see the waves had hit the bank, it just didn't stop. It wasn't a great big wave, like I said, but just like a force pushing the water behind. Turned around and ran.
Lenore Kumulani Van Gieson grew up in an oceanfront home along the coastal area of Keaukaha near Hilo. After witnessing the destruction to her and her neighbor’s houses caused by the first two waves, 11-year-old Lenore and her three younger siblings and neighbors ran inland to higher ground. She was born in Hilo on June 16, 1935.
VAN GIESON: While we were waiting for our bus, the water went over the road. Our uncle told us to get back in the house. When we went back to the house he went to the beach and he noticed that the water was receding, going out. We saw the water come up to the house. So when it receded we left the house again. The second wave already attacked our house and started to knock it down. And after the second wave we came out, we knew already it may get worse and we went out on the road, and that's when Jeanne Branch's grandmother saw us running and Jeanne and David came running with us. We could probably work our way up to what they called the FAA Tower and that's where everybody met. So whatever food they could get from the homes nearby there was brought up there. And those who wanted to eat ate. Because we all had breakfast by now but this is lunchtime and they were trying to figure out how to feed the children. Somebody had only one baby milk bottle and I don't know how many babies and that bottle went all around (chuckles) to feed all the babies, that one bottle.
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Warren Nishimoto interviewed Bunji Fujimoto in 1998 and Lenore Kumulani Van Gieson in 1999 in Hilo.
This oral history project is supported by the SHARP initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities through the American Council of Learned Societies.
