 This is Think Tech Hawaiʻi. Community matters here. Aloha, aui, nālā. I'm Kaui Lucas. For the last couple of years, I've had the great pleasure of hosting Hawaiʻi as my mainland here on Think Tech Hawaiʻi. Life is calling me to paddle other canoes. So, to end this amazing chapter, I'm honoring the place where I began, and which formed my understanding and abiding love and devotion to Hawaiʻi. Ewa Sugar Plantation. My guest today, Reginald Perry, also grew up on Ewa Sugar Plantation, and now owns and runs Barbers Point Aviation Services and Barbers Point Flight School. At the recent Ewa Plain Battlefield Commemoration event, Reggie gave a speech about his childhood there. It wasn't just a chicken-skin-good speech. It was a fresh from the emu, pulled off the chicken wire, fat-dripping, rich, crispy chewy, locally-raised pork-skin-good speech. But unlike the prized bits of pork skin stuck on the wire, wrapped around the pig in the emu, I'm willing to share. Welcome, Reggie. Thank you. Thank you very much. So that was quite an event where I met you. Let's talk a little bit about that, to get that out of the way. It was a battlefield commemoration. People were going, what? There's a battlefield there. Ewa, what was that about? Yeah, that was bombing. When they were on their way to Pearl Harbor, they decided to make Ewa an opportunity target. So that's one thing we haven't had. Carmen, the house you grew up in had been hit, right? Yeah. Debris flew through the roof, left a big hole in the roof that they lived with for a few days until Ewa repairman came out and fixed the roof. The house I grew up in also had bullet holes in the dining room. And they were patched, of course, by the time I came along. But this goes to show that there were even fatalities at Ewa. Yeah, yeah. Six Marines, I think, and a few children or one child from injuries. Ewa's sugar plantation goes way back, way back. Yeah. And your family goes way back there. You got mind beat by a couple generations. So tell us a little about that. So on my mom's side, they came from Madera on the USS Ravenscrag in 1876. And we still have the ship's logs of my family that came from Portugal. And then my dad's side came from England and then to Indianapolis and then also to Honolulu. And they started working for the plantation in 1905. My great-great-grandfather. And they started at Ewa. Yeah, they started at Ewa. Well, my mom's side, they started on Maui, Poonene. Well, Kauai and Poonene. And then my dad's side started right there in Ewa. Yeah, old Ewa. So the way that you, so you came along a little later. Yeah, a lot later. So your Ewa roots go from your great-grandfather and your great-grandfather, my dad, my grandfather, my dad. And after my dad, there was no more Ewa sugar mills. So that was it. How late did you get to live on the plantation? 1966. We moved from lower camp, which was right off of the old Fort Weaver Road. And then we moved into Tenney Village right in Ewa in 1966. And I was born there at the new house. And when I was born, they have a hospital and then we moved to the new house. You probably got your vaccination shot there. Yeah, I got mine on my thigh because my mom said, I don't want my daughters to have that ugly mark on their room. We always know what that was. Because it was a small hospital. You could tell the doctor, no, I don't want it on my arm. I want it on the leg. I don't remember being able to do that. But yeah, it was a small hospital, but it was a popular hospital too. A lot of people were born there, including me, my sister, my dad. The quality of life that you spoke about in your speech is the thing that really resonated so deeply with me. We moved away in 69 and far away. And so I didn't have that depth of relationships that lingered in the town as you did. Your dad was part of the Pahuana. Yeah, when they were redeveloping Ewa toward the end, he was the president of the Pahuana Association. That was before the associations came in and Ewa, what it is now with a lot more regulated. Nobody's getting away with what they used to get away with. Well, speaking of getting away with things, one of the things, I'm going to read a paragraph from your speech. Okay. Life in Ewa was isolated, but it was a good isolation. It was like having a secret place to live. Families worked hard. People respected one another's right to live the way they wanted to and with or without fighting chickens. No complaining about your neighbors. And if you had a problem, you worked it out. You worked it out. It was law and order without the necessity for law and order. It was a kind of like a marine base where everything was handled from within. Yeah, or army base or navy base. Everybody handled things among themselves. As you remember, the playing in the children's groups and who got to do what and talk a little bit about what that experience was being a kid and that I don't want to feed you the words. So you talk about your experience of it. Yeah, it was growing up, you mean growing up. It was playing with the devil's tail. It was heaven on earth. It was exploration. I like to explore. We like to do crazy things. I was one of only a few white dudes that grew up in Ewa. So it wasn't easy for me, especially without an older brother to get my back. So a lot of getting picked on a lot, but I wouldn't change anything. I mean, Ewa was the best place to grow up, especially if you're adventurous because when the meal shut down, we would go into the meal and explore, climb the tower and just do everything. Fruits was in abundance. You always had food. You always had cane. We used to catch birds and eat them on weekends and you were judged by the traps that you set and the birds that you caught by the end of the week. It was just a good time and the people were all nice, diverse. We had Japanese, Filipino, Portuguese all around our house. I think before that, they had separated everyone by nationality, I think. Kind of by camps, yeah. Yeah, by camp. There was Holly Camp, Korean Camp, Tantani Village, Verona Village, Hawaiian Camp was on the other end and then toward the end, everything was just merged together and everybody just got along. I struggle sometimes with talking to people who don't have that experience. It wasn't really until I heard your speech that you put it together so nicely, but there's that both independent, wild independence. I mean, when I think that at six years old, I had my own bike and I could ride for miles through cane fields and if you didn't know where you were going, you didn't know where you were going. Easy to get lost. We would increase our boundaries too. We would play cops and robbers and army and we'd say this road to this road and sometimes it was like at least a mile. I don't remember any pedestrian places, designated areas to walk. I don't remember any, I remember a few stop signs, but no traffic lights. I don't even remember seeing policemen in Eva when we were young. Not until maybe the cane police that would come by and they know your dad and they say, go home. So there was this kind of wild freedom on the one side and yet somehow we knew there were boundaries really clearly, really clearly. There was some kind of pressure, as you say. So we didn't need that external so much because I think it was just different time. Things were just slower. Everything is so fast today. I think the technology just changes everybody. We are all part of our environment and I think the way things were back then, technology wasn't, I guess in hindsight it wasn't what it was today. So in my opinion, as technology increased, things got simpler and as things get simpler, people get more difficult because back then they worked really hard and the people that worked hard, like our parents and everyone else, I think they became more simple people. I think there's an inverse relationship there. Well certainly I can remember going out and when the rains came through or you had to move the ditches, move the sluice gates and direct the water. Yeah, I remember that. The irrigation guys would go to the ice. So behind us is a picture of what it looked like from Malca looking across the Eva plain towards Waikiki. And because by the time I came along, my dad had worked himself up to be the manager. So we had a two-story house. Yeah, you had the big house. The big house. The big house. And so from the second floor we could actually see... Oh, the second floor. Right, the second floor. Yeah, we could see the, we could see all the way to Diamond Head, which I don't know that is possible now. But back to the quality of life, let's show some of the pictures for people to get a feel. It's almost like a magical town that, if you don't know about it, people go, what? Yeah, people that live their whole lives have never been through Eva. This is a particularly one of the really pretty buildings there along Renton Road. So you knew it. We knew it as the Eva shopping basket. Yeah. And so what are your memories of? Oh, man, stealing candy, going straight to the bag and eating the candy, turning in bottles of 7UP and Coke to Mr. Yasui for five and 10 cents. The fishing area, when you first walked in, the icy, the icy machine was right there to the left. And of course, all the fishing gear where we would go and catch tilapia at Tankei, the old reservoir. All the beautiful little lures and everything. Yeah, right there along the entry. I still remember what it smelled like. It was always air conditioned. And of course, they were always watching us kids when we walked in because they knew the deal. I remember that we used to buy beef by the side and leave it hanging. So we'd come in and mom would say, oh, we want this part of it. I remember. I remember all the beef hanging in the back too. Yeah. Yeah. Why just open up to this wide open. Yeah. Mr. Yasui. And the egg man. Remember the egg man? The egg man, the milk man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Little bit, I remember it, but I was really, really young. So by the time I recall, I don't remember him coming to the door, but I remember all the little chips, the milk chips. Yeah, I still have like a can full of those. Wow. Nice. Yeah. You have to, you have to trade the chip for the milk. Yeah. I think they had an allotment of chips per week or a month or however it was. So we put out the little, the little basket. Yeah. With the empty bottles and they would fill up. Yeah. Yeah. So it sounds like we're talking about a hundred years ago, but. Unbelievable. We talking, we talking. It's only 40. Yeah. It feels like, for me, it feels like yesterday. I remember it, it's clear as day. I remember every little crack and crevice of the, the meal after it shut down. I remember where to make all my hideouts and where, where, where to hide. So we have this, this beautiful little area. It's still there. It's really run down now, but if, if you, it's still possible to be seen. I don't, I don't know if you're not from Emma, if you can really get the feeling of it, but I went to a recent orchid show there. Okay. Yeah. Right there at the school on Renton Road. Oh yeah. And so have you driven through town recently? Yeah. I always go by. I even, every now and then I like to go run my same route that I used to run. I like to run my knees. I like to smell the banyans and just, even though I'm living in Makakilo now, I just, yeah, I always miss Elva. I always go back. So we are going to take a little break right now and then we'll come back and show some pictures of what it like used to be like. Okay. Sounds good. Welcome to Sister Power. I'm your host, Sharon Thomas Yarbrough, where we motivate, educate and power and inspire all women. We are live here every other Thursday at 4pm and we welcome you to join us here at Sister Power. Aloha and thank you. Aloha. My name is Mark Shklav. I'm the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea comes on every other Monday at 11am. Please join us. I like to bring in guests that talk about all types of things that come across the sea to Hawaii, not just law, love, people, ideas, history. Please join us for Law Across the Sea. Aloha. Welcome back to Hawaii is my mainland. I'm Kauai Lucas. And with me today here in my Aloha Oisho is Reggie Perry, who like me grew up on Eva Sugar Plantation, but his family roots there go way deeper than mine. And what do you remember your dad and your grandpa? What were there? What was really important to them? What do you remember of them in relationship to Eva? My grandpa was enjoying his retirement by the time I came along, and then my dad's dad had quit and moved on somewhere else, but my dad had started in the 40s, I think 1945, when he was 13. And I just remember him, he rode his motorcycle every day. You know, I remember listening to the whistle, knowing when he was leaving, when he was coming back, when to turn off the TV. You know, I remember him working hard and coming home dirty every day with his scarf and, you know, his lunchbox and just, just, he was a simple dude. You know, he went to work, came home and did what he loved with, and that was being active with the church. Which church was that? Immaculate Conception Church. Right. Yeah, he was really active. So that brings up a lot of the cultural things. I mean, it was a small community, and yet there was a lot of cultural events that took place. Sports, can you talk about some of the sports? I mean, there was a lot of sports at Eva. The volleyball, baseball. Yeah, see, I don't remember. My time, I remember baseball only. You know, we played, I played nine years. It was the old Bombers, the old Eva Bombers before it came, before it became the Hurricanes, I think. Like I was saying in my speech, we had the chicken fight, the chickens on our sleeves. I think we were the only baseball team with that, with the fighting, with the, with the blade on the leg. And that was the byproduct of our, our longtime coach, Bay Area Special. Here we go. So this is a, this is an interesting picture. This is just what you were talking about. Yeah, yeah. That's my old, my dad's old house. I want to mention that these, this picture is part of an amazing collection that you can find online by Isamu Murakami. If you google my hometown Eva and Isamu Murakami, you'll come upon a treasure trove of old Eva plantation pictures. So what are we looking at? Oh, we are, that was my house. That house on the top left, that was my dad's house. That's where the debris after the bombing of the marine base had gotten through the roof and the roof became compromised. And I remember spending my youth there with my grandma and my grandpa, you know, when parents would go to work. And that right in front there, that right now it's wide open. But before that it was, we called it the sand pile. That was where the, that's where they made the concrete, I think, and made all the, the flumes, the U shaped. That's also where I got 48 stitches, you know, falling in one of them, falling on one of them. So did you get to ride in the flume? Oh yeah, all the time, yeah, that was my fear. What was that like? I mean, what did you do? Oh, that was crazy. You ride, we'd, we'd, we'd pack each other to one end and then we drop off, we'd, well, we ride our bikes to run, one end, leave the bike and then pack each other to the other end and then we jump in, ride it all the way to the end, take the bike all the way back. And how did you ride? What does that mean to ride in a flume? For those who want them? Oh, well, you can, you can doggy paddle depending if the flume was high. If it wasn't high, then you'd have to get on a rubber, old rubber tire and bang the spiders off the walls as you, as you ride. Yeah, some days were good, some days not so good depending on the, you know, the level of the water, but the reservoir was always there. So we always had some place to swim and always had tilapia to catch and little goldfish. Yeah, it was a good time and mango road, you know, all the mangoes, I mean, I asked me anything. It was just the greatest place for a child to grow up in my opinion. My kids still ask me about it all the time. They always like hearing the stories. Mango road was one of my favorite places to ride bikes also. And that, the park there was where we went to fly, fly the flights, fly kites, which we made from the bamboo ribs of the, of the umbrellas. Oh, that's, yeah, okay, that's, that's convenient. We used to launch our rockets there with the Cub Scouts and the Boy Scouts. That was where the grandstands were. I mean, that was such a different time. When I was coming up, it wasn't, it was old and derelict already, but I know at one time, you know, in the 40s and 50s, I know that that field was pretty prominent on the island. That's where the carnivals were. I'm not sure when the carnival started, but I knew it was the largest carnival on Oahu. Yeah, speaking of that carnival, which was the largest carnival at the time, there were some very interesting events at the carnival having to do with fish. Tilapia fishing. That's got to be the only place where the coordinators drain the pool to only the deep end and through tilapias in, and you would actually fish with real fishing poles, pull out the tilapia and win the prizes. Yeah, a lot of that going on. Checkers in Pogo, Bozo da Clown, who are those other guys, the big teddy bear looking guys? The Banana Splits. Yeah, Banana Splits. Yeah, and EK Fernandez always brought the good rides out there. It was a good time. I danced hula with a hala from Eva Beach, and I remember we performed at the carnival too. That was my first stage debut. Oh, my sister too. Yeah, she trained in Eva Beach with Anderson. Anderson, yeah. Oh, that was her teacher? Yeah, okay. Well, and that's where she made her debut too. Yeah, those were the good old days. Truly, truly. And there's this, I heard you talk about your dad who was also one of the union guys. Yeah, so what was his official? He was the secretary of the IOWU, but I was a little young, so I don't know too much about it. And then he became the editor for the Ever Hurricane. Yeah, so my dad was very active. I don't know that he was that simple. Oh yeah, no, probably not. Yeah, without a doubt. So the Ever Hurricane was a newsletter. Yeah, I think it was a monthly newsletter. Yeah, and they would say who was born and, you know, who passed away. I guess we had our own obituaries. And then the events like the Halloween costume contest. I don't remember that one. I remember every year, Christmas, the sled coming around, throwing candies. Remember the sled in the reindeer would bob up and down. And of course, the bond dance twice a year at the old Japanese club in the Hongwanji. So in 1966, you are too young to remember this, but the Santa's sleigh, when they were throwing out the candy, got stuck on our lawn. I think that's where they launched it from, right? Isn't that where they launched the sled from? I don't know if they launched it from there, but that year, I was recently looking at the pictures. Yeah, Santa got stuck on our lawn. So that was a big year. So there was candy for months. It was a big deal. It was a really, really ornate sleigh. I remember Rudolph moving up and down, and it was a big area for Santa to sit and throw stuff out. And I never forget that. It was a great time. And you talked about the bond dances. I think this might be the only thing I have left from the actual, well, I mean, other than pictures and like the issues of the hurricane, but the bond dance was really one of the most fun, special events of the whole year. So this was the Eversoto, which was not, I mean, the taiko, the drumming, and the dancing was one thing, and then the foods. Yeah, the andagi. I love the andagi. I don't recall much else. That's pretty much all I ate. It was a good time. We could just jump right in and dance. And I know it was mainly for the Japanese, but everybody got involved. Everybody got involved. And that was that, I think that was, that's kind of the point. It was like, even if it was for one group or another group. Yeah, we just absorbed each other's cultures and just took it in and ran with it and, you know, it worked out. Kind of made it our own special way. Yeah, our own flavor. Our own flavor of it. But letting everybody, as you say, keep their respective commissions. And then, and then there was this, like an outer circle of acceptance overall. I'm not sure what you mean, what do you mean? Oh, just this, that, you know, like you were saying about the chicken fighting. I remember as a kid, my first experience of watching a cockfight, and wasn't like my parents took me to one, but you ended up there. I ended up there because we were spending the night in one of the villages. And that's where the food was. That's where the good food was. Sometimes, I mean, it was shocking in a way, but it was also exciting. It's such an event, you know. And if you're able to maybe allow that filter of, okay, what is the greater context of this event? And not just say, oh my god, what are they doing to those poor chickens? I mean, I understand the cruelty to animals. But that's all in you. That was their culture. That's their exercise in their culture. So we've grown up, and now we don't do that anymore. Well, we do, but we don't know much about it. It's all clandestine. Right. Well, I'm not advocating cruelty to animals. I just want to say that. Oh, me neither, yeah. Yeah, with the acceptance, everybody just says, yeah, I know what you mean. Everybody lived and let live. Yeah. And if you had a nice wooden, like my dad put up a nice wooden fence, and I thought he had a wooden post with chicken wire, but it was the wider chicken wire. And I thought, wow, we had the nicest fence in Elba. And then some guys that didn't want fences just put up aluminum corrugation and that's, and everybody just did their own thing and nobody cared. I think it was because nobody really had an interest in, I mean, they wasn't their homes. We paid 38 bucks a month for the house, $1 for water. You could call anybody at any time they come and fix your plumbing, fix the roof. So I think maybe I think, you know, that might have had something to do with it because it wasn't, you know, everybody was had free housing because they all worked for the plantation. So nobody was bogged down with that, you know, trying to make their area beautiful to increase property values like today and everybody does. I think that contributed to acceptance, you know, if people just, that's why it was so good. And you cannot get that anymore. You know, once your neighbor starts putting up corrugation or, you know, raising chickens, then it starts raising the flags and back then wasn't like that at all. You would walk in anybody's yard and pick fruit and most of the time nobody would care and scold you until you took too much. I remember my mother making me go and because I had taken some mulberries from the neighbor's bush, go back and knock on the door and ask. I remember the blackberries behind your guys's house. Yeah. Blackberries and strawberries. Did you know about the macadamia nut tree? Yeah. We had one right around the corner. Yeah. Yeah. Take the hammer and break them. Exactly. Peel off the green skin first. Right. And then if you got them too early, there wouldn't be a macadamia nut at all. It would just be white stuff. Right. Right. I can't even begin to list all the different kinds of fruit trees that were around. Oh my God. Five finger, five V, every mango you can think of, tangerine, orange, lychee. Yeah. Oh God. Those are the days. So, Reggie, we have one minute left. Can you believe it? And I just want to know if there's anything else about those days that you want to talk about? No. I just have a, you know, I try to tell my kids all the time that, you know, the millennials, they're always labeled, you know, millennials. And, you know, some of, what is that other word, entitlements, everybody, you know, feels the children nowadays are like that. But I think just try to, I hold on to what I remember and I try to pass that on to them as best I can, but I only have them for so many hours a day. And when they go to school, they end up doing, you know, their own thing. So I would say hold on to the past and preserve your memories as best you can like that guy does with the pictures. Yeah. There's an interesting way that you've put it together is that today we don't have those kind of entitlements, but back in the day, you know, there was housing and people weren't so hard up to make ends meet and that way the basics were taken care of in a way. And yet there was still a deep sense of personal responsibility and pride in what we had, even though we didn't own it. I mean, we certainly didn't own the house. I mean, came with a job. Yeah, we appreciated everything back then. I mean, from the time I was young, when I had my first bike, I mean, that was everything. Thank you so much, Reggie. And thank you so much, Think Tech, for making the last couple of years a very exciting place.