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A four page typewritten letter dated January 6, 1947 chronicled the events that saw the demolishment of the Puumaile Hospital. Excerpts from this letter relate the terror of that event.
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"After exactly nine months and three days from the time we were here before, we're back at NAS sponging on the Navy and are we ever glad to be here! They'd better get used to us because we're going to be here a long time. There'll be no more going back to Puumaile in two weeks now, and I seriously doubt whether we ever go back to that same location.
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We had no premonition of the fury and destructiveness that was going to develop from what we thought on Friday was just a rough sea. All day we watched the waves crashing on to the rocks, flooding the beach beyond the sea wall in the the meadow past Dr. Leslie's house. All that had happened before, many time and we were merely mildly excited about the whole thing. The surf was surely high and the sound of it was loud, but it was breaking well out in its usual place and all was secure....but then came the night, and one of the most terrifying experiences I have ever been through.
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During the early evening the roar of the surf began to get exceptionally loud and almost continuous. We could feel the pounding of it against the shore as it made the whole place vibrate slightly. About 8:00 p.m. it began to get really deafening. It kept getting steadily worse and each time the water spilled over more and more, flooding the whole front lawn. By this time I was really getting worried. High tide was due at about 12:45 a.m. and if it was this bad already, what would it be like then. The moon was almost full and we could watch all this clearly.
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By 10:30 the entire front hospital grounds were all flooded by each cycle. About 11:15 the waves were so fierce that when a cycle came, the water quickly built up to the wall on the outside, spilled over in a flooding torrent and immediately built up the level of the wall on the inside also, so that in effect there was no wall there, sea level was up to the top of it. And then the following crests just came right on in without breaking and struck the hospital and houses with loud, sickening thuds.
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At 1:15 the doctor came around and tried to reassure us and sent us back to our rooms, saying that high tide was past and it would be okay. I stayed where I was. A good thing too because no sooner had he gotten all the rest back to their rooms than just about the worst one of the night came along, making the building shudder and taking out a part of the bridge between the annex and the main building with a loud splintering crash. Water was racing all around the hospital now, way back into the jungle behind it. In some of the low lying areas back there it was 6 to 8 feet deep and rushing wildly about so we couldn't leave the building if we had wanted to. I listened down the elevator shaft and could hear the loud rushing hiss as water raced through the kitchens and the banging of tables and things. With each succeeding cycle we could hear the screams of the girls in the west wing where the water was striking the wall of the building there and pouring into the wards.
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As soon as the water would go down a little bit, they would begin evacuating us to the Boy's cottage which is on the rise of ground way at the rear of the area and the highest point. We went downstairs to the staff dining room and climbed through the window to make it to the cottage. Many very sick patients couldn't make it and had to be left in the south wing.
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Gradually the din of the surf quieted and by low tide about 8:00 a.m. water was only coming over the wall in small amounts on occasion. The hospital grounds were an unholy mess, huge rocks and silt and debris strewn all over the place, lumber scattered about. Both doctor's houses were gone. The road in front of the nurses' cottage was completely torn out. Boulders were strewn all the way up to and under the cottage and had taken out some of the underpinning. Water had washed through the first floor rooms. The hospital building itself was still standing but the offices and first floor on the seaward end had been flooded and of course the basement storerooms and the kitchens were all wrecked with trees, boulders, and other debris washed through the basement windows.
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Bull dozers reached Puumaile about 10:00 and leveled off enough road so heavy trucks and military ambulances could get through. Even while we were being evacuated, some big waves came in over the wall and washed around the wheels up to the running boards.
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