 Mark Schwab, the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law across the Sea program. Today, my guest is Paul Brennan. And our program is about the history of hope. Paul has traveled across the sea from Ohio to India and New Guinea, finally settling in Hawaii with his wife, Dottie, about 40 years ago. Paul is a student of history. He's the president of the Kailua Historical Society, and the lead author of the award-winning book titled Kailua. He's a retired pastor and a master woodcrafter. Paul and Dottie live in Manawili, where they have taken in 20 foster children over the years. In these times of stress and strain, many people feel hopeless and they worry about the future. I've heard it from lots of folks. Paul has told me that the history of hope in Hawaii provides contemporary value for us. I've asked Paul to share this history of hope with us. Paul, welcome. It's good to see you. Thank you. My pleasure. Now, please, what is your definition of hope? What are your concerns about the current COVID-19 pandemic, the economic problems we're having, political problems in Hawaii, and is there hope? Please tell us. What is the history of hope and what are your feelings? Please. The concept of hope is more foreign to me. I've been aware of my need to rely on it again and again. My wife and I just celebrated 60 years of marriage. If I took the definition of hope to be a wish, well, then those wedding bows would not have meant very much. Hope is much more than a wish. Since I have been in Hawaii, living in Manawili, and being able to interview many people myself about Hailewa's history, I have learned so much about the true meaning of hope. To me, it's a feeling of trust. It's a confidence that there is a reason to believe that good expectations can take place. I have thought about the environment of Manawili. Manawili has good soil. Manawili has ample rainfall. Manawili has a good combination of light and dark. For me, hope is like a garden where different energies converge to create new life. It's that confidence in positive outcomes, all the while realizing that there will be challenges that will be coming along. So, hope has a very noble kind of respect for me. It's very personal and it also relates a great deal to my vocation. When I moved to this place, I had no job, but I came here on a hope and a prayer and I believed that that was rewarded. I would do it all over again. I have just been so fortunate in being able to find not only work and to be compensated for my work, but especially to be rewarded by being in contact with people of hope. I would be happy to share with you what some of that has been. I want to hear what your relationships have given you and how that provides hope under these strange circumstances and for the future. Although I never had the privilege of interviewing her, I feel like I know her on a personal basis. And that is this person who was born a century before me, 1838. We call her Queen Liliro Calani. And I have spent many hours in an area where I know she visited and she had some very significant experiences there. At the Queen's retreat, as we call it, there is a carriageway and there is a bath and there is the home of the Boyd family still standing. And often I have gone there as I have thought about how in the 1870s she began coming to this area. It was a retreat for her and she obviously loved to come there. And sometimes it was incorporated into round the island tours. In 1881, for example, we know that she came and she had this unfortunate experience of an accident where she tumbled out of the carriage and she said she thought she was going to die. And there were four men who put her on a stretcher and they carried her on the old government road over to Waimanalo and Mr. Cummins, who was the manager of the Waimanalo sugar company, fired up their steamer and they took this injured person at that time, the princess, and they took her around to Honolulu Harbor where she was able to find six weeks of very intensive rest in Washington Place and she was able to be given all of the healing processes. Fortunately, she broke no bones. Fortunately, it was mostly just bruises to her body. But I have thought about that in the context of her life and how for many of those experiences she had to retreat. She had to find hope. She had to be renewed. And likewise for me, I have gone to that same place because I have felt the manao of that area, the mana, which was so strong. And I have just been the recipient of so much renewal of hopefulness. This business of being able to find your balance, of being able to find creativity has been with me all of my life. And so Queen Liliu Polani in her many visits to Manabili have encouraged me to walk back to some of those same places and to try to feel the same renewal of energy. I think for example of her best known music, that popular love song which she was inspired to write there. It's all about renewal. It's all about the convergence of the expectations that we think we human beings can find. And so I have benefited from that, even though I never saw her in person, even though she was a century before me. But one of the things that I have taken from that area, thanks to the permission from the owners of the property, I took the tree that was planted at the end of the carriageway because the Weinberg Foundation had no desire to use it. And I milled it and I have made benches and other furniture from some of that wood, which to me seems penetrated with the hopefulness of that area. And once the termite holes have been able to be fixed and once we are able to expose the beautiful grain, then you can see the strength and the vitality that that area has to provide. So the spirit of our Queen continues is what I hear you saying and it lives on and it gives you personally an ability to revitalize. That's what I hear you say. That's exactly what I'm saying. And then subsequent to that awareness, I have been in contact with people who lived also in this area before us. One of them was Joseph Kanyalpil. And the Kanyalpil family have been very prominent in Manawili. They had a Kuliana and we began seeing their name appearing on some of the old maps just after the great Mithaili. John Kanyalpil and his son Joe Kanyalpil, one of 16 children became a very good friend of mine and I was fortunate to be able to be in his presence and learn about the journey of that family. They had four different residential areas and they were constantly being moved around from one to another. But there was always this hopefulness, this confidence that there would be enough, all the needs of their family could be met. And so Joe became one of my very good friends. Joe told me about what it was like to grow up in Manawili. There was a steel, I guess, behind their house and the Okoli how was being made. But Joe focused on his horse. He focused on his schooling. He focused on his family. He focused on what was happening and he was among many who had to adjust to the fact that Kailua was no longer going to be centered in Manawili. But about 1930, the great shift took place from Manawili, an agricultural sedentary kind of existential life shifted to what we know today as the Cosmopolitan center of Kailua. And so three miles down the road Joe had to get on his horse and continue his schooling in a very different place. And he had to find new friends. But always there was the confidence things are going to work out. It would be positive outcomes. So I hear, you know, there's a spirit of our Queen and your friend Joe says, focus. And now we have a question from a viewer. How can we learn from our past to find hope journeys, troubling times? Well, I think we can learn from their past by understanding what their past consisted of. They had skills. There was no question about that. Joe and the other Kaniyapios were not coming in like immigrants. But Joe had many skills. He did his work working for the city and the county. But he also, first of all, had many friends and community around him. And even when the war broke out, where did Joe go when he was in Queen's hospital? He was a relatively young man at that time. He came home from the hospital to find that the military had taken over their home. And so the place that he went was to Kauhau, Lanikai, where he had friends. And they helped each other in that newly formed relationship. That community was sufficient for him all the while that the war was going on. So I hear spirit, focus on your strengths and friendships are kind of important things about hope and maintaining hope and think about those things. Is that right? Do I have it right? Exactly right. And I have found that to be so true in my own life. And we have about 10 minutes left. Do you have any other experiences with people you've spoken with and that you can share with us, similar to those you've already done? Sure. Well, one of the immigrants who came here was not born in Hawaii. His name is Reverend Chimpei Goto. And Reverend Goto was the first pastor of what today we call the Kailua United Methodist Church. Reverend Goto was pastoring to basically a Japanese language speaking and a Japanese community of immigrants in Kailua. And the little white church as it was called was where Salvation Army is located today. On the day of the bombing, Reverend Goto was taken from the pulpit, incarcerated on Sand Island, and held there in Communicado until Christmas Day. And then the military believed that he was sufficiently trustworthy and they allowed him to go home and to find his own way to Kanioi where Ben Parker School and his family were. He walked in and his children have told me about that Christmas being unlike any that they had ever had before. He was still wearing the same suit that he was wearing on the 7th of December 1941 when the military took him. He turned out to be a very loyal friend to the government. He was calm in his own personal demeanor. He had these many contacts. He could share his sense of confidence that all would work out. And when the war finally was over, he was honored for the work that he had done in liaising with his people. That's just another example. And that one adds to what you've already said. I mean, don't let circumstances control you and maintain your hope, maintain your confidence, maintain your feeling of the spirit of hope. That if you proceed according to your beliefs, you'll be fine. And for me, it's also been strengthened by the biblical kind of concept of hope. It's this confident expectation of what God has promised and its strength is in God's faithfulness. We can believe that once we have done all that humanly is possible for us to do, things will work out. And we will be able to find at the end of the day, at the end of the night, at the end of the pandemic, the kind of resurrection that we all are yearning for. We call it normalcy. I think it gives us a new understanding of what normalcy really means. We have a few minutes left. Do you have any other examples of these type of local stories to share with us? Absolutely. I've interviewed 100 of these people. And Mary Wong Takahashi quickly comes to mind. Mary Wong was born in Monawili. She worked in her grandmother's store, which is where the Trinity Presbyterian Church is located just at the Pali light going into Kailua. And Mary Wong grew up there, realizing that there was the rice mill just across the street. Her uncle ran that rice mill, and she helped her grandma, although her formal education consisted of only about two years in school adjacent to where their little store was. But Mary Wong married a Japanese man, Koshiro, and that Chinese Japanese liaison became strong, and they had their family. And even though they could not afford to buy the land from Harold Castle when he told them, either you buy it or you move, well, they had to move. But Mary and her family were able in that transition as they went to Kanioi to find a new place. They were able to keep these relationships with friends. They were able to continue to create ways in which they could support each other. And I will always be less to remember people just like Joe and Chimpeh and Mary and the dozens of others who have contributed to my experience while I have been here. So you're really talking about people. You're really saying that we have hope because we are people and we should look for those relationships, those friendships, that spirit to share, and keep our friends close and talk to each other, spread the spirit. Two or three minutes we have left. If somebody is feeling down and feeling hopeless and feeling there's no hope, what words would you give them? What would you tell them? What advice would you give them now? Be truthful about the realities of where you are. Be honest about what your needs are and don't ignore any of them. And keep that honesty in your relationships with other people. If you have needs, express them. Spend time in reflection. Be creative with your hands. Build new expressions about your vitality. And don't check your pulse all the time about why you are doing what you are doing. Be confident that your therapy, your healing, your hopefulness is going to be able to bridge whatever troubled waters there might be underneath us. Sorry, go ahead. In my lifetime I've been privileged to meet Mother Teresa, Luther King, Jr. I never knew them very well, but now I understand after their lives have been portrayed before us. I never met Winston Churchill, but the spirit of their hopefulness, the spirit of their strong commitment to truth and confidence is something that I have been able to receive in great amount. And so I am grateful to be able to share it. You know, I really appreciate that. And it made me think as you were talking, especially about Manawili during this period of time, during the pandemic. As you know, I've been walking around Manawili and actually what has happened is the pandemic has brought out the people of Manawili. And everybody is where we never saw each other before, never talked to each other before. Actually, there's a lot more friendship and people are waving and walking and talking and it's kind of interesting, but you kind of made me think now that Manawili is kind of a connection point for my own experience. And it is hopeful. It is hopeful. So I appreciate, Paul, your insight into that. Well, thank you. And I also am happy that I know you as a new friend, too. I think that we are enlarging the net of strength, of friendship. There is more compassion towards each other. There is more of this very important interaction that can be taking place. And sometimes it takes a crisis like this to make it happen. Well, Paul, I want to thank you for being my guest today on the history of hope. Paul Brennan has shared his personal experiences and his insight into hope. And I want to wish everyone a hopeful day and aloha.