Kamehameha the Great; King of my Ancestors
Today, June 11th, is a holiday in Hawai‘i.
It is Kamehameha Day; the day we celebrate the greatest king to have ever ruled our islands.
Growing up in Hawai‘i I thought of myself as more American than Hawaiian, for I was in kindergarten when my home became the 50th State. “Old men” still talked about the bombing of Pearl Harbor all the time, to impress on us what it had meant to them; all us kids had a story we’d heard from our grandfathers. If asked, we were expected to tell it with reverence.
One of my clearest childhood memories is of watching my teacher cry when John F. Kennedy was assassinated; she was a Catholic school nun, black habit and all, and I had never seen one of them cry before. At first we all just stared at her, equally shocked into silence. One by one, we started to cry too, because it just seemed like the right thing to do. Even the boys.
My parents were teenagers when World War II ended, and my dad fought in the Korean War before returning home to make my mom his bride. My mom would always tell us kids that our being born got him to be different, and whole again. He served in Viet Nam when I was in high school, relocating our entire family to Subic Bay in the Philippines to help with the war effort from there, until the last of our American troops left Viet Nam in 1973. As you can imagine, I went kicking and screaming leaving all my friends behind, but I was to be an American patriot same as my parents were, like it or not. During my school breaks I candy-striped in the hospital on base, and I’d listen quietly to the stories of the POWs that had made it to us for care; part of my responsibilities was simply to let them talk, receiving it as well as I could.
Today, one of my brothers is a Lt.Colonel in the Army, and I had written of his Red, White, and Blue Values when he served in Iraq.
So even for me, living in Hawai‘i all my life but for that brief stint in the Philippines, it is often hard to imagine that we were once a monarchy, under the rule of the amazing Kamehameha the Great. In Pauahi, Story of the Kamehameha Legacy, author George Hu‘eu Sanford Kanahele writes,
“No one surpasses Kamehameha the Great in leadership, historic achievement and lasting impact, or in having a transcendent vision for his people. He personified many of the qualities and skills that his people esteemed from ages past: physical prowess, fighting spirit, excellence and achievement, industry, integrity or pono, courage, discipline, wisdom and intelligence, or na‘auao. He demonstrated abiding faith in the sacred traditions, yet understood the forces of change; he brought about political stability and national unity; he maneuvered the ship of state skillfully through the turbulent seas of Western technology and commerce. Giants among men are recognized everywhere, so it is no wonder that this “Ka Liona o ka Pākīpika” or “Lion of the Pacific,” as Joseph Poepoe, the early twentieth century Hawaiian historian called him, has been ranked by foreign visitors and writers alongside Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, and general Marquis de Lafayette.”
Other times, it is easy to see our heritage everywhere I look, and today, Kamehameha Day, is one of those reliable, and undeniably comforting times.
I do wish that all of you reading this could be here to celebrate with us. I will be outside most of today ignoring my phone and my computer, and enjoying this amazing place I call home. The child Kamehameha, was born only 36 miles from where I live, and you can imagine the celebration there today!
my grandma told me that king Kamehameha is one of our ancestors!!!! how do i find out if this is true, i do believe but i just want to check!!!!
Posted by: BriAnne | April 29, 2008 at 04:26 PM