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Another guest post from my mother, to go with the box she sent me from Hawaii.

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Kona Airport to Waikaloa Beach Resort, Hawaii, Hawaii

Hawaii waterfallI doubt that I’ve ever been in a place with “Resort” in the name. My husband and I have lived a bit more roughly on travels and moves around the world. But all that changed a month ago on our first trip to Hawaii. His conference on satellite imaging of hydrologic data was to be at Waikaloa Beach Resort on the Big Island and I went with him. I went under-prepared but not without preconception. So, the drive from the Kona Airport to Waikaloa was the first surprise – no lush, tropical land but instead, a barren lava flow, the land hardened black rock. While I intended to see afresh, to see what it is itself, the little comparison brain started ticking right away. It looked so much like the Desert Road, the road that goes across the eastern slopes of Mt Ruapehu just south of where we live in New Zealand.

I’m older. I’ve travelled a fair amount, and without a doubt more than I expected when twenty-two and afraid I would never get beyond Kansas where I grew up. So my challenge is to see afresh, not through eyes dulled by familiarity or eve comparisons of “this is like that.” I want to see with the eyes of a child, a whole world that is new to me. When headed to a tourist destination, all well-traveled and brochure, how does one see it without a frame constructed by others, carefully surrounding it?

Waikaloa Beach Resort, Hawaii, HawaiiI quickly found that I’m not, at heart, a resort person.

I found it pleasant, but was uncomfortable with too much service and also with the way I saw some of the guests treating those who worked there, sometimes rudely, sometimes not seeing them at all.

But there were interesting stories among the waiters, the cleaners, the man who fixed the malfunctioning lock on our door. How had they ended up here? What part of any American dream were they aiming for – many were from other countries. I like to collect stories from people as I travel. The stories remind me that my take on things is not the only one – like when listening to a woman from the Philippines tell me how much she loves Imelda Marcos, one of the more reviled women in history.

So, while my husband went to conferences, I walked along the lava-roughened shore, littered with white dead coral. I found sea turtles, watched humpback whales breaching, and snapped my tourist pictures of sunsets among the palms. I live a calm life in a relaxed town in New Zealand; Waikaloa Beach was an echo of that. I felt the Polynesian kinship between New Zealand and Hawaii. They both have the same word for Women – Wahine – and I thought yes, this is where my neighbor’s ancestors may have come from. The world could learn from both places.

The ukulele plays on and the good voices echo into the night.

hawaii sea turtle on the beach

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Written in April 2010 by my mother, Ellen Kroeker, and shared here with her permission

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They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Poppies with new camera

The Ode comes from “For the Fallen,” a poem by the English poet and writer Laurence Binyon and was published in London in The Winnowing Fan: Poems of the Great War in 1914. This verse, which became the “Ode for the Returned and Services League,” has been used in association with commemoration services in Australia since 1921.

Turkey - Asia Minor in 1849

Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection

We were at the Dawn Parade for ANZAC day today, a big occasion here. April 25 might be one of the most sacred days in New Zealand. While it is in honor of all service personnel, it is mostly a commemoration of Gallipoli, a devastating battle in Turkey during WWI, and an honoring of those who died there. Our friend (89, former British Royal Navy WWII and son of a man wounded in Gallipoli) wanted us to go with him and we did.

When the white haired men march behind the kilted pipes and drums through the dark autumnal morning, one can feel the ghosts of the slaughtered young men hovering around them. Surrounding them as they stand in a great circle for the service, families hold their babies, teenagers with poppies pinned to them jostle, albeit quietly , and one is aware that these are the descendents of those who served and connected to those who died. About 100,000 New Zealanders served in World War I out of a population of less than a million. The man in front of me, the woman beside me wiped tears throughout the service. The morning was mild and as they all marched away, first the old veterans, then some whose hair was not completely white and finally, bringing up the rear, the snappily dressed young ones, the rosy fingered dawn spread across the sky.

Map of Indochina including Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand

Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection

Gil, who grew up on Sunday night documentaries that extolled the heroism of those who fought in WWII and listened to his father’s stories from his time in the South Pacific during that war, always wanted to be on the side of the good guys, to fight the kind of people who were responsible for the Holocaust and for Pearl Harbor. These were the myths that he grew up with. There were no other narratives presented.

So the little Gil listened, learned, and when he grew up, he dedicated his life to being one of those good guys. But the enemies were shadowy and some seemed to be in his own government, the men of government who sent young men into the Vietnamese jungles for dubious purposes. It wasn’t a clean or clear war as WWII had seemed to be. Still, he had made a commitment and he had to meet his obligations.

1972 population map of Vietnam from Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection

1972 population map of Vietnam from Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection

When he was presented with an alternative (if you go back to Vietnam, I’ll divorce you, said his then-wife; if you don’t go to Vietnam, we will court-martial you, said the Navy), he went to Vietnam and, back in the jungle, with hostile fire around him, he got his “Dear John” letter, informing him that the divorce was going ahead.

And when he returned to the States with his discharge papers much later, there were no parades, no heroes’ welcomes. He was no one’s hero. Change out of your uniform, he was advised. Try to travel incognito, as if no one would recognize a military haircut in the days of long-haired hippies. He opened his green footlocker and packed all the medals and citations away.

This week, Laurie, our older friend and the Royal Navy veteran, urged Gil to pull out the medals, pin them to his chest and march in the Dawn Parade. Gil said it wasn’t his military, it wasn’t his occasion. Laurie said, come on and Gil doesn’t easily say no to Laurie, this cheerful man who once introduced Gil to someone as his “other son.” So we got up at 5 am, and while Gil put his ribbons on, they were nearly undetectable under his jacket. Gil was introduced to others at the gathering place as former LT of the US Navy and welcomed as such.

Wellington, New Zealand - credit : Ellen Kroeker

The kilted bagpipers and drummers swung into place, and the white heads, male and female stood to attention under the instructions of a very quavering voice. They turned on command, the drums began, the pipes began a mournful tune, and, with fragmented step, they marched off to the town center and the cenotaph for the Dawn Service. There, among the Brits, the Maoris, the Scots with their family tartan colors, the Irish, marched one American, slightly uncomfortable, slightly at home, as always. Along the side of the marching column walked wives and husbands, children and grandchildren.

On one corner, a small boy was riveted by the parade of heroes.

Poppies 1
photo credits : Fleur Phillips & James Pratley

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