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Boy Scout Civil Defense Messenger of WWII
My father served as a Civil Defense Volunteer in 1941
My father was born on the 4th of July in 1933 in the pineapple town of Haiku in Maui. My grandparents and all of their 13 children worked at the Libby cannery. WWII affected my family greatly. I knew that my father had been a proud Boy Scout in his youth but I didn’t know that he had served as a Civil Defense Messenger for the 4th Marine Division during the war. He told me about it last week.
My father was 8 years old when Pearl Harbor was bombed. Schools closed in Maui for weeks after the attack. My father’s family lived near the coast and the threat of war in their backyard was real. My father thought that Japan would win the war. If Japan could bomb Pearl Harbor, they could take out Lahaina too. The Civil Defense Agency asked the Boy Scouts to collect scrap metal and paper for the war effort. My father readily volunteered and went through extensive training.
My father was the last of 13 children. As a boy, he mostly wore hand-me-downs. Before he went to Lahainaluna boarding school at 14, he got his first pair of shoes. Which felt so strange to him he immediately took them off when he wasn’t in…
