As they all turn 88,three friends reminisce about family, their shared college years and beyond

By Betty Shimabukuro

betty@starbulletin.com

MY AUNT, Kikue Shimabukuro, remembers her mother telling her that when people in Okinawa turned 88, they’d sit on the porch and hand out candy to family and friends.

And so for her 88th birthday party in June, Aunty Kiku sat at the front of the room and gave everyone a little bag of candy. A connection.

In the back of the room were two of her closest friends - Dora Akamine Oshiro and Kimie Ozaki Yukimura. They went to school together at the University of Hawaii and this year, all three turned 88. Another connection.

There we were, weeks away from the eighth month of the eighth year of the millennium, and in this one room were three women of double-8 years. What a connection.

A conversation was in order.

So a few days later, we all sat down - the three 88s and me, with my cousin Claire Shimabukuro helping fill in the gaps in her mother’s and the other ladies’ memories. What I find in my notebook from that day is no clear storyline, no revelations, just assorted memories focused on their years in school together.

But when you think about it, the fact of that college connection is a pretty good little story.

All three were neighbor-island girls who left their families for the big city of Honolulu after graduating from high school in 1938. This was a time of few career women, yet that’s what all three became, and raised families, too.

THEY GOT TO HONOLULU the slow way: “We couldn’t afford to ride the plane. We had to ride the ship,” Dora said.

For her and my aunt, that meant a cattle barge from the Big Island. They slept on the deck and ate musubi that they packed along. “We all came steerage - $5,” my aunt said. Kimie came on a passenger ship from Kauai, but said the ride was so rough she was too sick to eat.

UH was just the original “Quad,” plus

Hemenway Hall, and my aunt remembers that you could see all the way to the ocean from campus. Transportation was by streetcar or foot - they walked to the movie theater in Waikiki to see “Gone with the Wind.”

Graduation day was in June of 1942, six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and all the graduates wore gas masks under their caps and gowns.

Then came lengthy careers - Dora taught at Waikiki and Liliuokalani schools; Kimie and my aunt worked for the Department of Social Services, serving welfare recipients and foster children, although my aunt retired as a counselor at Aiea High School.

Now widows, among them they have 10 children and 10 grandchildren, plus Dora has three great-grandchildren.

NOW, BACK around to the beginning. Kimie was talking about how she ended up in college. She was the second of five daughters, and her older sister had to quit school to help support the family.

Her sister never had the chance at college, a fact that seems to bother Kimie still. “I felt she was deprived of it, so I had to try. I couldn’t fail.”

I couldn’t fail. Of everything in our rambling conversation, this is what sticks with me.

Maybe there’s no such thing as luck. Maybe good fortune is what you make of it, a combination of the right intentions and the strength of spirit to carry them out. That gets you to a great 88 - and beyond.