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1998 Second Place Winner
Story by Wesley Ching
Interviewee: Vivian Aoki
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April Fool′s Disaster
On Monday, April 1, 1946, an unseen enemy came to the Big Island's Laupahoehoe.
Mrs. Aoki is my neighbor, she was raised on the Big Island, and attended Laupahoehoe school. When she was on the Big Island she was in a devastating tsunami−− and here is her story:
The students had just arrived at school, real early because Mrs. Aoki lived in Ninole and she had to catch a bus to get to school. Mrs. Aoki was eighteen years old when this happened. The School Park was on the oceanfront and was filled with trees. It had a big open field and at ore end was a huge old wooden bandstand. Behind the park was a graveyard, filled with headstones, and surrounded by a crooked old fence. Behind the graveyard was Laupahoehoe School.
Mrs. Aoki said, "a policeman came around 6:45 A.M., and told the children to go to higher ground because a tsunami was coming." But the students did not listen, it was April Fool′s Day and they thought it was a joke.
The water started to slowly recede from the shoreline and out into the Pacific Ocean. You could see the bottom of the ocean floor. Kids had gathered at the shoreline because the fishes were jumping around. They wanted to catch the fishes, because the water had suddenly vanished, and they could just go in and get them. When Mrs. Aoki heard the warning she yelled to one of the younger kids, "hey let's go up to higher ground!"
Mrs. Aoki saw the wave start to form, and she only had one thing on her mind, run up to the school grounds. She just took off and ran. Her heart was pounding, and she was scared. Mrs. Aoki made it to the school grounds. At that moment she turned around and saw the giant tsunami coming. It was like water let loose from the sky. Water was rushing forward. The waves were smashing and covering everything in its path.
Children started to climb onto the bandstand, but the wave never stopped. The children were screaming, and tried to get off the bandstand but it was too late. The wave crashed and pounded the bandstand, and it broke like skinny twigs. Broken pieces of wood were floating around, and children were in the water yelling, trying to swim away. The wave then went all the way up to the graveyard. The wave started to swirl around and the children in the water tried to escape. Then it pulled back into the Pacific, and carried the children with it. The children disappeared from sight.
After Mrs. Aoki saw the destruction that the tsunami had caused, she then realized that her younger brother, James, was missing. Mrs. Aoki got really scared, and felt that her brother might have been carried away with the tsunami. A little later she saw James coming up the road. He looked like he was going to faint. He had sand in his eyes, and in his system. He had swallowed salt water and was all wet. He told Mrs. Aoki that he and his classmate had held on to a guava tree when the tsunami hit. A teacher rushed James to the hospital to get the sand pumped out of his stomach.
To this day Mrs. Aoki still remembers what happened on Monday, April 1, 1946. She now knows that if the sirens go off, she is not going to go near the shoreline especially on April Fool′s Day.
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All materials © Copyright 1996-2007 Pacific Tsunami Museum Inc.
130 Kamehameha Ave Hilo, HI 96720 tel: 808-935-0926 FAX: 808-935-0842
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Last Revised November 2007
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