A special visit from a former 1941 student!

We get visits from former Hickam Elementary students every once in a while, and occasionally they return to us as parents whose own children become our students.

But Jeannette Kingery wins the prize for being one of the very first students to attend Hickam Post School -- in 1941!

Hickam Post School had just opened and she and her sister were among its first students. Her father was in the Navy and stationed at Pearl Harbor, and her family lived on 5th Street on Hickam Base. She was a second grader at the time.

On Dec. 7, 1941, she witnessed the attack of Pearl Harbor with Japanese planes dropping bombs and strafing the airfield and Pearl Harbor. She remembers being evacuated in an auto caravan with other families to Honolulu during and after the attack. Her family stayed with a Japanese family in Honolulu whom they had known because they had rented a house from them before moving on base.

After the attack, she and her younger sister did not go to school because they were too young to wear gas masks. Her twelve-year-old sister was the only one who could still attend school.

Sometime in 1942, her mother and two sisters were evacuated to San Diego aboard a troop ship. She said that a Japanese submarine actually fired two torpedoes at them, but, fortunately, missed its target. (Supposedly the Japanese skipper reported that he had sunk the ship.)

When they were in San Diego the following school year, she had to repeat the second grade because there were no records that indicated that she had been in the second grade at Hickam and had passed.

Jeannette now resides in Oregon, and is retired. She is writing a family history, and their experiences during the attack is one piece of that history.

This was her first visit back to Hawaii since 1941.