Hawaii in 1946 and Hawaii in 1968

May 3, 1946

Hello you all!

   Here it is – your scuttlebutt reporter switches to a bit of fact – pleasant fact! This morning 10 USN men were screened off the ship – screening has taken place – and I am now QM on LST 919 (if you’ll notice , that’s the same one that’s probably sailing for the States tomorrow!) They call that in Navy “A break.”

   I hope this letter shoves off before we do!

   Yesterday we had liberty once more. We headed straight for Waikiki beach and for 50¢ (unusual amongst generally high prices) rented everything – showers, locker, trunk, towel – valuables checked & water – the whole Pacific.

   We had a good time swimming and enjoying the picturesque scenery. Honolulu really lives up to its reputation. It is beautiful.

   Early evening we walked to the Navy Club known as The Breakers – right under majestic Diamond Point. Since it hadn’t opened as yet, we hunted cocoanuts (legal – no one gives a rap) (converting hell – damn to civilian). We succeeded only in getting one unripe one & an old little ‘un – which we ate nevertheless.

   “The Breakers” is built right on the water’s edge – seas-side open with a view of the sunset & moon over the ocean to the rhythmical tune of waves crashing almost on the dance floor. There was a band & music and there also was beer. Good American beer! One bottle of that stuff makes you extremely thirsty & “schreit nach mehr” [yells for more]. After three bottles though (absolutely no effect so stop worrying – it just tasted well) we left – since weekdays there usually aren’t any girls to dance with.

   We saw “Algiers” at a USO (pretty lousy picture) & had a hard time getting back to the ship (crowded transportation facilities) – an hour late. Result a very mild bawling out. We were quote “unschuldig wie ein kleines Osterlamnn!” unquote [innocent like a little Easter lamb]!”

   That’s about all – the next time from the states. There will be a silence of about 2 weeks minimum.

   Solong then – Anchors Aweigh

                        Your

                                    Rudy

Twenty-two Years Later

   Above is one of several letters about the LST 919’s stop in Hawaii on our way from the north of China to San Diego. While I didn’t remember many specifics of that interlude, I do recall swimming in a quite warm ocean not to mention the pleasure I felt at being off the 919 on which we had spent nearly a month trudging across the Pacific.  Pleasure, just about unalloyed, the kind much easier to come by at the age of nineteen than in later years.

   Not that I didn’t enjoy my second and only other visit to the 50^th state of the US. But it was very different. Very. In 1968 I was chairman of the executive committee of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association and failed to talk my colleagues out of scheduling an APA meeting in Honolulu. My reason: graduate students would have a hard time financing a trip that far (and costly) off the track.

   There were other wrinkles.  I had reluctantly agreed to support Herbert Marcuse as president of the division. Reluctantly, because I was not enamored of his crowd-pleasing performances. But I agreed because he was being attacked by know-nothing California right wingers. On the personal front, Fannia had to leave for Sydney because just before then her father had passed away of a heart attack. Accordingly, appropriate arrangements needed to be made for our kids, then 9 and 7 years old. Since I was (and still am) a fuss budget, this was not just routine.

   We had our meeting, we got to swim, we were guests at a luau (not mi gusto) and, as the saying goes, a good time was had by all. I was in Hawaii all right—everyone worked to give us that good time. But it wasn’t all all like my first encounter, molti anni fa, with that special island. 

   In recruiting participants for the program of our meeting I was lucky to get Richard Rorty to give a paper—not because my invitation was so persuasive, but because Dick was a devoted bird watcher who had never engaged in that activity in Hawaii. I also asked my good friend and colleague Jordan Churchill to chair an important session, a move that turned out to be a mistake. The commentator of that session—I cannot come up with his name—went talking on and on, going way past his alloted time. I was sitting frustrated in the back while Jordan failed to excerise his authority to call a halt to an endless ramble. To stay more or less on schedule, the next session had to be cut short.

   Two things were noteworthy during that Hawaii stay that had nothing to do with the philosophy meeting, one negative, one positive. At the same time that we had that philosophy meeting in Honolulu, the Democratic convention took place in Chicago, the wildest in modern times. However, there was as yet no direct radio connection between the US mainland and Hawaii, so that our knowledge of those Chicato shenanegans was late and very partial, with the five-hour time difference of no help at all. So, in effect, we missed an important chunk of US history.

   The cheerful item was wholly private. As a pilot in the war, Jordan, a friend for nearly twenty years, had passed through Hawaii, where he met Ruita, whom he subsequently married. Ruita was born in Honolulu of a French father and a Hawaiian mother. Her father had passed away by 1968, but on this trip I got to know her mother. It was the first ime that I eencountered someone for whom wearing a muumuu was utterly authentic.