Childhood Memories of Kunia

Funny how as we enter the new year of hope, I'm looking back into my past.

My header photo shows the irrigation ditch/canal a short distance uphill from the house where we lived when my brother and I were born. Our large, lone house was surrounded by sugar cane. I recall someone saying my paternal grandfather was in charge of minding the pump or something like that.

My father was the eldest son of nine children. There were eleven, but two died in infancy.

My parents are standing on the right. 

I used to wonder if it was my childhood memory that made the house and especially the backyard seem vast.

However, from these photos, you can see it really was large.

Sheesh! How did they ever keep that lawn mowed?

That's me on the top photo (looking toward the house) and me and my brother on the bottom photo (in the opposite direction). You can see the sugar cane just beyond the large tree.

So here are our memories. Remember that I was 6 when we moved away. Dennis was 3. My mother would have been 26.

My Memories: 

I remember climbing down the ladder into that irrigation canal/ditch. There were dojo there that we liked to catch. Dojo are freshwater loaches. It's the Japanese name for eel like fish that Asian immigrants brought to Hawaii for food in the 1800s.

I remember falling into the canal water and getting wet. We had a pond in the front of the house that was full of fish also. I don't ever remember eating dojo. 

Dennis' Memories:

That ditch was the one that ran alongside the mountain side of the road that went to our Kunia house. The view is looking toward Waianae. The iron ladder was probably there for workers to clean out the ditch. The ditch was a feeder for some of the reservoirs and also fed the fields below them. I don't think the water was from Waiahole although it might have been possible. The ditch had good sized fish swimming in it, carp, I think. But the ditch wasn't always filled so I don't know where the fish came from. I also remember dragonflies flitting around the ditch.

Mom's Memories:

That shack on the left side of photo was a pump. Your father had to go there everyday to turn it on to divert water to the house from the canal. Yes, you and Dennis did play in that canal. And it was him that fell in the water, not you. No, I never cooked the dojo. You both just liked to catch them.

One funny memory I have. Dennis was only 3. The sugarcane workmen used to cross through our backyard because it was so big and a bother to walk around. 

(First off, you have to understand that my brother is the kindest, most gentle person around. I don't think I've ever heard him yell.) 

One day, a worker laughingly told me. "Yoh boy sassy doh.  (Pidgin translation: Your boy is sassy.) He told me, 'No walk my yard.' (Pidgin translation: Don't trespass through my yard.)"

Mom is still laughing about this just to imagine her three year old son telling a huge man not to walk through his yard.

And these are the memories we remembered just by looking at that photo of the irrigation canal/ditch.