Former Hawaiʻi resident and humanitarian worker Ramona Okumura is one of about a million people in Gaza heading to the Egyptian border to flee the area before Israel unleashes a ground assault.
Now a Seattle resident, she was born and raised in Honolulu and graduated from Hawaiʻi Baptist Academy.
Her brother Miles Okumura said he last communicated with her on Monday. He lives in Hōlualoa on the Big Island. He's been waiting day after day to hear of her safe passage.
"Getting out of Gaza is basically impossible," he said. "I think one of the catches is that, evidently, Egypt is willing to open its borders on the condition that Israel and Hamas allow the United Nations aid convoys to go in. And everyone agrees to that in principle, except I think Israel was concerned about security and inspecting the aid convoys, and that's where things broke down the last couple of days."
"We heard from her about the conditions on the ground there and where she's staying at a United Nations compound. She spends a lot of time talking about the Palestinians and the people that are around her: the drivers, people that have helped them and she's got really a lot of compassion for those people. That's why she was there to begin with and goes there every year, for the last five years," he said.
She started working with the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund to help young people get fitted for prosthetics after retiring from the University of Washington in 2017.
"To her, the world is full of children injured by warfare, and now it's going to be more brutal than ever. I can only imagine what's going through her mind and worrying and thinking about kids that she's going to go back and help — and I'm fairly sure she's going to go back. That's the kind of person she is," Miles Okumura said.
Ramona Okumura's nieces have started a campaign called "Bring Auntie Ramona Home."
This interview aired on The Conversation on Oct. 17, 2023. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
