Bob Hino - Photo Collection - Under the American Sun: Camp Roxas Film Documentary

Robert "Bob" Hino

My name is Moki Hino and I am an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Hawaii, My grandfather, Bob Hino, was the general manager of MASDELCO and Camp Roxas from 1958 until the camp’s closing in the early 70’s.

I was born in Guam in 1965 and my first home was on Camp Roxas. I stayed on the camp until 1970 when my mother and my brother and I moved to Michigan for three years. And by the time we came back to Guam three years later the camp had closed.

My grandfather worked with a number of people that I remember. Oscar Delfin, Bert Hautea. Antonio Cabreza. Mr. Recabar. Chief Paul Gray who was the Navy Security Chief at that time. Mr. Galila. Also, my grandfather’s receptionist, Manuel Sarosa, who now lives in Bacolod, in Negros, in the Visayan Islands.

I want to mention Domingo Tadeo, a furniture maker. We have a number of pieces in our home today that he made on the camp and they were made of ifil wood. In our home in Hawaii, we have a very big credenza with accordion doors that fold back and forth. We think of Mr. Tadeo every time we see that. We used to call him “Inchik” because he had very Asian almond eyes. Everyone said he looked like a Chinese person. So we called him “Inchik.”

We lived in the Camp Roxas management compound. If you turn left off the Marine Drive where the War Memorial Park is today, there’s a Pizza Hut. And right across the, the street from that Pizza Hut, we had a compound with Quonset huts where the camp management lived. We would drive up a gravel road and then it made a circle around a playground that had a swing set and a jungle gym. The first house was the Tadeo family. And then Hauteas. Recabar. Then Chief Grey. Our house was at the very end. And then if you came around the circle, The Delfin family lived right next door to us. And then the Cabreza family. And they were all Quonset huts.

We had the luxury of having two Quonset huts put together. So it was quite a large home. What I remember about that house in particular was the garage. Off to the right of the garage, my grandmother had a hothouse with plastic green roofing that let the sunlight in. She put a bathtub in that hothouse and ran water through it and grew watercress. She was well known for having watercress in Guam.

Our place was kind of a little bit away from the camp itself but we would, from time to time, drive down. We would go over the hill, where Camp Covington is today, and then drive down at little bit. And then my grandfather’s office was on the right hand side. From time to time we would go and visit him. I remember the sound of a telegraph machine that would take telegrams from RCA. Behind that, there was a medical clinic where Dr. Dingnadisi worked as the doctor. Dr. Sammy was the dentist. And there was also a post office and a barber shop.

On the other side, I remember a very large gymnasium and the Christmas shows that they put on every year. They would bring in entertainers in from the Philippines quite frequently. And that was the first place that I saw the Tinikling dancing. I remember a Filipina singer singing:

“Those were the days, my friend. . . I thought they’d never end.”

That still sticks with me for some reason.

Every once in a while, workers would come up to the house to do maintenance and repairs. Freddy was helping my grandmother do something in the house one day. My grandmother said: “You go and give Freddy a kiss on the cheek.” She wanted to instill in me that kind of respect for people, no matter what their station in life was. I think it had an effect on the vocation that I chose to follow as a priest.

We always missed Camp Roxas. They’ve carved away a lot of the land where the compound of Quonset huts where the camp management lived. Every once in a while, we used to take the car up to that old housing area and take a look at it. It had. Much of it had fallen apart but we could tell which one was our house still.

We were sad about that but philosophical.

I remember one evening we were visiting with Mr. and Mrs. Jimmy Shintaku, my grandfather’s nephew. We were driving home to our home in Talisay where we built a house after we left the camp. I remember being in the back seat and my grandmother looking toward to the old housing area and she said: “Oh gosh, you know, I miss those years.” And my grandfather said: “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it. We have to move on.” And that’s what they did.

I suspect that my grandfather was a soft-spoken leader. I know from reports of various people from my childhood and later on in my teen years that my grandfather, was very well respected as a manager. My grandfather was always willing to lend a hand to anybody who had worked on the camp.

A church member here on Guam told me what his experience was on the camp. It wasn’t an easy life for them. They had to work very hard. They suffered quite a bit. Many of them were separated from their families. The thing that I was proud of was though that he said: "Your grandfather, he was a fair man." Then he went on to describe to me what it was like to live in a barracks and things. The camp closed in ’72. So it’s almost 40 years ago.

There was a painter, Nestor, who called my grandfather in the late 1970s and said: “I need documentation that I lived in camp.” My grandfather said: “No problem. You come up to the house and we’ll take care of it.”

Nestor came, very nervously, and knocked on the door. My grandmother let him in and had him sit at the dining room table with us and he and my grandfather talked about what they needed. My grandfather signed an affidavit. He was always willing to do those things for people from the camp like that.

Camp Roxas and the Camp Roxas project are important to the history of Guam because the contribution of the Filipino worker is an integral part of the story of what this island has become in the 21st century. That can’t be forgotten. So many of those people are now dying. I think this is a wonderful way to honor their contribution. Our privilege is at the hands of their hard work and labor way back then.

My grandfather would be incredibly proud to know that this is happening. He would be proud, not that he was the manager, but that he was part of the team, and part of the effort, and part of the story, standing side by side with the people who were on the camp with him in the late ‘50s, and all of the ‘60s and the early 1970s. He would be proud that he was part of that history.

My grandfather died very suddenly in 2004 and he died about 10 miles from where he was born in territorial Hawaii. I recall we were having a conversation in the kitchen one day. We were having this discussion of what to do with his ashes. He said, “Oh, I don’t know if I could ever do it or make it happen. But one of the things I would like to do is one of Mr. Marshall’s tugboats go between here and Guam and Saipan and scatter my ashes between Guam and Saipan.” Even though he went back and retired in Hawaii, I think that his heart was really right out here in the Philippine Sea because of all those memories of Masdelco and Camp Roxas.

There is a special memory and connection to Camp Roxas for my family because it was such a wonderful time in our lives. It gave my grandmother and grandfather opportunities that they would never had growing up in the sugar plantations in the Hawaiian Islands.

For me, personally as an Episcopal priest, who I am and what I’ve become and my motivation to do all of that started at Camp Roxas. It started at Camp Roxas not only because my grandmother and grandfather raised me on the camp but also the influence of all the people who were there. Their pride in their work and the phenomenal hospitality and kindness. And the general love of people in their midst, no matter who they were.

I was the beneficiary of that. So now I feel obligated to carry the torch and take that out into the world. For all the people that were in the camp at that time, if you think exponentially of the number of lives that they have affected, I think it’s just a marvelous and wonderful thing.

My hope for the person with Philippine ancestry who lives on Guam today and is a descendant of Camp Roxas --- like I’m proud to say I’m a descendant of Camp Roxas --- is that they just listen and experience the story. My prayer is that they can look back at a difficult time with pride because of that hard work and, in particular, the sacrifice of those folks. Many people today who are the descendants have very good lives and a lot of opportunity if they would not have probably if their ancestors had stayed in the Philippines.

--- Excerpted from interview with Rev. Robert "Moki" Hino, Episcopal Priest, Diocese of Hawaii,

grandson of Bob Hino, Masdelco general manager (1958 – 1972),

St. John’s Episcopal Church, Upper Tumon, Guam, April 25, 2010

by Burt Sardoma Jr. and Bernie Provido Schumann.

Transcribed May 15, 2011 by Josephine M. Garrido