Leilani Hino
April 21, 2010 - Honokaa, Hawaii
Ms. Bernadette Provido Schumann - Producer, “Under the American Sun”
(Via Robert “Moki” Hino)
Aloha, Bernadette:
My name is Leilani Hino, and I live in Honoka‘a, Hawai‘i, the town of my birth. My father, Robert “Bob” Hino was general manager of Masdelco (Marianas Stevedoring and Development Company), on-site at Camp Roxas, from 1957 or ‘58 until its closure in the early 1970s.
My elder son, Robert “Moki” Hino is temporarily on Guam where he was put in touch with you. He asked me to jot down some facts about Camp Roxas so he’d be prepared to be interviewed by you, the producer of “Under the American Sun.” He lived there from birth until about 6 years old, and I think he wanted a context in which to place his memories. I was young myself during my Masdelco/Camp Roxas days (they are one and the same in my lexicon), so my memories are childhood ones. I realize, decades later, that Masdelco/Camp Roxas was the major pivotal point in my life and I was extremely lucky to have simply been there.
I don’t think my memories will contribute much to the film itself, but they may give you, personally, some insights, so I address them to you to do with what you want. I hope they add to your sense of the vibrant life mosaic Camp Roxas was in my time.
I was very happy to read Mr. Don Marshall’s transcript on the film’s website, because it gave me a broad business context in which to place my childhood experiences – he was my dad’s immediate supervisor from Lusteveco in Manila. I also read Bruce L. Campbell’s paper on Filipino Migration to Guam 1945-1975 which helped me place my family’s experiences in the vastly larger vigorous pattern of migrations criss-crossing the Pacific Basin over the past couple of centuries.
That I was part of a sweeping cross-current of migration, societal change, and convergence of cultures of course was not on my radar as a child. For me, it was simply another adventure of new places and new people. I’d been born in the little plantation village of Honokaa during the peak years of the Hawaiian sugar and ranching industries. And by the time I was ten, had been moved as family baggage numerous times within the then-territory. When we moved “overseas” to Guam it expanded my world by a quantum leap.
My late father, Robert “Bob” Hino, immigrated to Guam from Hawai‘i in 1954 when he was 35 years old. He was a struggling public accountant in Wahiawa, on the island of ‘Oahu, when he contracted with the Government of Guam to help set up its tax system. His parents had been immigrants themselves to the then-Republic of Hawai‘i from Japan just before the turn of the twentieth century. Bob was born in Hawai‘i, the last of ten children.
His wife, Itsue Higashi Hino, was also born in Hawaii the offspring of Japanese immigrants, although her parents’ situation was different from her in-laws’. She told me many times that the best thing about her time at Masdelco was being immersed in a Filipino culture, which resulted in deep affection. She confided a few years ago that the first time she went down to “Camp” as the new manager’s wife, she was a little freaked out to see so many Filipino men in one place -- she grew up on a sugar plantation, and as teenagers, she and her friends were fearful of walking near the Filipino camp where all the bachelors lived. When she was growing up during the first half of the 1900s, Hawaii plantation laborers were housed in “camps” of Japanese, Filipinos, Portuguese, etc., and although they co-existed, there wasn’t much intermingling. Her parents were farmers who had immigrated seeking work. She feels Masdelco/Camp Roxas was living and working in a world so much larger than what she grew up in.
Dad fulfilled his initial two-year contract with GovGuam, and my mother Itsue taught third-grade at Adelup Point School. My younger sister Jan and I did what kids do in new lives – plunged in, made friends, and had fun finding our place in the scheme of things. Dad was midway through his second contract when Luzon Stevedoring (Lusteveco) was looking for an on-site manager for its Guam operation. His name came up, and after vetting him through the Pacific Rim business network, Lusteveco hired him as the general manager of Masdelco (Marianas Stevedoring and Development Company), based at Camp Roxas.
When the Masdelco opportunity surfaced, I recall overhearing what a fabulous career opportunity it was. I used to shamelessly eavesdrop on adult conversations. In the way of little pitchers with big ears, it is the tenor and sub-rosa tones of those conversations which stay with me. They had to do with Dad’s having to “break contract” with GovGuam in order to take advantage of the wonderful opportunity Masdelco presented. He wanted to do it properly. It gave me a profound sense of the integrity with which he conducted himself. His integrity became a major compass for my conduct as an adult. He broke contract with the blessings of his GovGuam boss Dick Taitano.
I’m not sure of the year we went to Masdelco -- it was either 1957 or 58. I think I was 13 years old. I am now 66, so it was more than fifty years ago. So please forgive any inaccuracies. My memories are perceptions and impressions of a young mind and ego, shaped and colored in the telling by who I am as an “old fart.”
The most fundamental, enduring impression I have of Camp Roxas is the strong sense of community we all had. Growing up a part of that community influenced me profoundly ever after.
I vaguely understood that the Navy’s enormous need for construction workers was the economic engine driving the company’s existence. At its peak, there were more than 5,000 men at Masdelco. I remember thinking it was such a cool place because Roxas had so many more amenities than the plantation camps I remembered in Hawai‘i. Besides the all-important galley, it had a PX, library, church, bowling alley, ball field, dispensary, barber shop, outdoor movie theater, Rizal Beach, and even its own security force. In later years the indoor sports arena was added.
We lived in a big Quonset hut in the tiny company compound on a hill a couple of miles outside Camp Roxas where some ten management personnel and their families were housed. At that time, Quonsets were standard dwellings for contract workers on Guam -- it wasn’t until the 70s that my parents built a hollow-tile house up in Talisay.
That wonderful Quonset hut was home to our family for the whole of our fifteen-plus Masdelco years. I loved it. It was huge, and none of the interior walls were load-bearing, so everyone’s house was configured a different way. When I temporarily moved back to Hawaii as a college student in 1962, I missed the comforting curved walls of the Quonsets I was used to -- it was disconcerting to live in a box. Our Masdelco house sheltered us through many typhoons, and even mostly survived the infamous Typhoon Karen, the first of Guam’s “super-typhoons.”
The Pingue family had a lot of kids; I don’t remember how many. I never saw Mr. Pingue much –our fathers seemed to be always working. I was lumped in with their older kids – Romel, Elena, and Rudy. Romel was the oldest kid in the compound, and responsibility for keeping the dozen or so rest of us safe and out of mischief fell on him. It wasn’t until I had children of my own that I realized what a great job he did. We used to meet every day after school and chores to explore the surrounding “boondocks” and had a great time doing things kids everywhere did – made a clubhouse, built things out of stuff we found, played games of our own making, and ate all kinds of stuff our mothers cooked up for us. I tasted pancit bihon for the first time at the Pingues, and to this day it’s one of my favorite things to eat.
We “Masdelco Kids” had a club we called “the RAC” – Roxas Athletic Club – because like kids everywhere our heroes were athletes. And Camp Roxas had athletes worthy of idolization. Wow, they were awesome. Masdelco had softball and basketball intramural leagues, and the rivalries were intense. All the managers sponsored teams, and the teams had muses who were usually gorgeous girls from nearby villages. I always felt sorry for my dad’s team because instead of muses, they had us as mascots. No wonder they didn’t do too well!
I remember when the sports arena was built. I believe it was at the time the only wood-floor basketball court on the island. It was the pride of Masdelco, and the Masdelco basketball team was equal to the court as a point of pride. The Masdelco Stevedores softball and basketball teams were renown in island sports circles.
Our softball team was awesome. Dad’s secretary, Domingo Peldonia was a superstar. He was an amazing pitcher -- so good under pressure, and he always delivered. The games, especially with the Air Force and the DPW (Gov Guam Dept of Public Works) were SRO attendance, and for us fans, were better than stateside major league games. Mrs. Delfin used to bring a pot she beat on like a drum, and Mr. Ballard would lead us all in cheers.
“Tik Boy” was the catcher, the other half of the Peldonia-Tik Boy battery. He was nicknamed Tik (thick) Boy because he had a short, compact physique. As the catcher, he sparked and set up Doming’s electric pitching. I can still hear the ecstatic roar of the crowd the first time Doming pitched a no-hitter – and it was a crucial game in the islandwide league, too. One of the things that impressed me enormously about my dad was that Doming was his secretary!
The sports arena was the venue for the Christmas shows. When we first got to Camp Roxas, the Christmas shows were “homegrown” created, directed and performed by the men in Camp. Later, I suppose when the company was better-established, they became elaborate affairs with top entertainers from Manila. I was enchanted by them. Violinist Gilopez Kabayao came several times. Rogie Rama came as a headliner one year and met her future husband Tony Cabreza, who was Dad’s right-hand man. After they got married, they lived in the Masdelco admin compound. Their daughter Roanne works at Commercial Port today.
My mom was always amazed at how much rice the galley cooked every day. It was a LOT -- like two tons (I don’t know if that’s accurate or not – but it was a staggering amount). The galley crew cooked them in huge pots. We “appropriated” three of the pots when the company closed, and we still use them today for big family parties here in Hawaii. I love using them because it’s a tangible connection to a long-ago piece of my past.
Pepe Amando was the Camp’s executive chef I remember most. “Executive Chef” wasn’t his title, because that title wasn’t used at that time, but it’s what he was. Seems to me he was called “The Galley Chief” or some similar Navy-like term. He used to occasionally use our family as “guinea pigs” when he was experimenting with the galley repertoire. I suspect that’s where I learned to love Filipino food, because to this day, his flavoring and use of ingredients is still my personal standard for Filipino food.
He used to handle the food prep and presentation for the big Christmas party my parents hosted every year. I vividly recall the hors d’oeuvres trays he created – splendid, artful arrangements. The one that sticks in my mind’s eye was a huge butterfly made up of delicious little bites of this and that. He and my mom would discuss the menu weeks ahead of the party. From where I sit now, the Christmas party, which was a fiesta kind of affair held Christmas Day, was a free-flowing gathering of family, friends, and business associates with lots of good food.
I loved Christmas time. The men would decorate their barracks with Christmas lights and spectacular estrellitas. The whole camp was a brilliant visual feast with block after block of clever, ingenious, displays of dancing lights -- elaborate nativity scenes, Santa Claus and reindeer, Christmas trees and presents, angels and stars.
One of the guys, who was an electrician at SRF, showed me the little device he’d constructed to switch the lights off and on in patterns of his design. It blew me away, and I’ve been fascinated with logistical design ever since. I believe there was a Christmas decorating contest every year. It was a special treat for us to see. I recall there was an open house type evening each year during the competition. I was curious about the barracks, and that was the one time we were invited in to the men’s homes. In later years, I always attended “family days” to see how my younger son lived as a sailor in the Navy – his quarters reminded me very much of the quarters at Masdelco.
Prudente Blanca, our houseboy, my mom’s treasured factotum, was in charge of decoration. He’d go out in the jungle and haul back palm fronds and other foliage, which he put up to backdrop the flowers from the garden. One year he made a spectacular estrellita with blinking lights on a shooting star tail. It hung in our living room as a holiday centerpiece every year thereafter. Hanging Blanca’s estrellita was a Hino Christmas tradition right up there with decorating a tree.
Blanca was a very important component of our household. My mother worked as a third-grade teacher at Adelup Point School until she retired. Blanca kept our house spotless and running as his second job. During Typhoon Karen, he single-handedly kept our house intact, and although like everyone else we had a lot of water damage, my parents (who were on a trip halfway across the world at the time) were able to go home to livable quarters. His feat is part of our Hino Family lore.
I often used to wonder about his name until I figured out that everyone was referred to by their last name, Navy-style. I think it was a couple of years before I figured out that “Blanca” was his family name (hey, I was a kid – what did I know?). I often thought about that after I was a Navy wife where family names and nicknames were the norm. Interestingly, when I was at boarding school in Baguio City, we used to refer to each other by our family names or nicknames.
Anyway, after some years, Blanca left Masdelco, joined the Army, married and began a family while he was posted in Hawai‘i, and eventually became a US citizen, and migrated to California where he lives today. We still keep in touch, and it is one of my mother’s old-age joys – she’s 90 – to answer the phone and hear, “Hi Mom, it’s Blanca.” We never had a houseboy after Blanca, although we did have help with the heavy work and such. But no one else became a cherished and integral part of our family like he did.
It occurs to me that Blanca might be a good resource for the film. If you’d like to contact him, please let me know and I’ll check with him and put you in touch. Unfortunately, most of the others we stayed in touch with have since passed away. But if I think of anyone else, I’ll certainly let you know.
You might be interested to hear I was startled when I read the following in Don Marshall’s transcript:
When the U.S. Navy wanted to recruit more sophisticated trades, we couldn’t get them from Ilolilo so we looked to Manila, which created the problem of where to house this group. So, we constructed Camp Busanda because these “Tagalogs” wouldn’t come over to eat with our Camp Roxas “Ilonggos.”
That blew me away, because I’d never even been aware that Camp Busanda existed! So I was happy to read on:
In due course, both ethnic groups came along real well with the various Guam civilian communities and if you look today at Agat and Santa Rita, we blended right in through intermarriage. We’re all Americans, now.
I commend you and wish you well in your undertakings to honor and celebrate your heritage.
Warmest Aloha,
Leilani S. Hino
