There was another YMCA club that I hung around with -- The Royals. Most of my Japanese school friends, and my closer Riverside School buddies were in it. I never actually joined the club, but for some reason, I always attended all of their functions. The bunch of us stuck close throughout high school.

I remember one unforgettable event, the time we spent the night at Onekahakaha Beach.

Something important must have been on my mind when the counselor was giving us instructions. I thought he said to bring the fixings for a "pot luch" dinner the first night, and an egg for breakfast the next morning. He'd provide the bread and portuguese sausages. What he actually said was to bring dinner for the first night, and an egg for breakfast.

Mom thought it would be a good idea for me to bring a can of corned beef, and a raw onion. That way, when we all threw our stuff together for dinner, we could either make corned beef sandwiches, or cook the corned beef and onions if we wanted something hot. As usual, I had it wrong. When it came time for dinner, everybody whipped out their homemade bentos and chopsticks, and chowed down on their great dinners.

Me? I opened my can of cold corned beef and munched on that. Everybody pitied me and offered me rice, and I accepted somebody's musubi, but turned everything else down. I thought of crunching on the raw onion, but decided that was entirely too gross.

The rest of the night, we played cards and farted. I remember Allan Machida pinning Doug Chow Hoy, sitting on his face, and letting one go. I'm surprised Doug didn't haul off and whack him in the nose.

But can you just imagine what it must have sounded like to anyone who was outside the beach pavilion? A sousaphone convention, perhaps? Or maybe a bunch of flatulent cows?

Small Stuff #1: I marched with the school band in the Christmas without a uniform. No, I mean without my own uniform. I was forever forgetting to assemble the necessary parts (jacket and trousers) during band class, and when I finally got around to it, there was nothing left. I borrowed my jacket from one of the band members who couldn't make the parade (it was too small), and a pair of gray pants that I had to buy.

Small Stuff #2: I once ordered Edward Yasuhara a small chest with one-a-day scripture writings, and had it delivered straight to him. He was a very religious guy, obviously. He called to thank me, then walked me home the next day, preaching all the way. God bless him.

Small Stuff #3: That summer, Gary Sato and I went to the beach a lot. Our lunch usually consisted of a can of vienna sausage heated up on the sun-baked black lava rocks on the shore.

Small Stuff #4: Also that summer, I saw my first weke run. Weke are small little goatfish about 3-4 inches long. People were catching them by the hundreds. Me? I brought home about 20 or so. Mom cleaned them and cooked them up for supper. I could never survive if I had to depend on my fishing abilities.

There was a cane field behind our house that served as our own personal "jungle adventure." We used to burrow our way through the tall sugar cane, blazing trails to hidden cane field "forts" that could only be found with a set of secret directions. Actually, I don't know why we thought they were secret — the forts were only a few feet away from the lawn, and anyone passing by could see us if they peered carefully into the plants.

We'd make a small clearing, and put up handkerchief flags to mark our territory. We'd pretend that evil knights on horseback were on the prowl, and when we discovered a gang of them invading territory, we'd spring out to confront them, and begin jousting, using the dried cane tassel stalks as lances. They were just perfect for the job -- stiff enough to stand up to some roughhousing, but brittle enough so they'd shatter when they were plunged into your enemy's body as you rode pell-mell toward each other on your armored horses.

Cane fields are hazardous. Not only are there tons of wildlife in there (spiders, centipedes and rats), the plants themselves were booby-traps just waiting to inflict small, jagged, shallow leaf cuts with their serrated edges, and with the insidious tiny cane hairs that imbedded themselves into the skin if you merely brushed up against the stalks. Most of the time, the cane field just sat there, getting taller and taller. Then, every two years, things got a little more exciting with the biennial cane harvests.

One day, you'd come home from school to find the canefield burned, trampled, cut, flattened. There'd be men with big machetes, bulldozers with claws, and heavy yellow trucks all over the place, cutting and knocking down the harvest, our cane forts along with it.

Every now and then you'd see the remnants of a long-forgotten handkerchief flag poking up from the piles of cut cane. There'd be that cloying sweet smell in the air as the sugar juice leaked from the broken stalks and mixed with the soil. The odor is unforgettable.

And the critters! Spiders, cockroaches, centipedes, rats, and even a mongoose or two came out of the canefield onto our lawns to seek haven from man and machinery. The neighborhood dogs went wild playing around with the creepy, squirmy critters.

That was the time when the cane flumes made their appearance. Oh, they were there all along, but the growing cane hid them from view for nearly two years. We'd play with the flumes, sending paper boats hurtling down the rapid water that roared by. We had heard stories of other children who got their thrills by jumping into the flumes and riding several hundred feet before escaping.

The neighborhood kids and I never did try it, especially after a story appeared in the newspaper about a boy who was killed at the Wailuku mill. He had been riding the flumes with friends, and had been swept into the sugar mill where he apparently was ground to bits in the machinery. I could just picture his friends and the guilt they'd carry for the rest of their lives.

For the longest time, I looked for traces of red whenever I used sugar. Silly, of course, but hearing Dad talk about the incident (the boy was Dad's patient) made quite an impression on me. I never even thought of riding a flume after that.

You know, I burned the cane field down once by mistake. According to the Tribune-Herald, about four acres went up in flames. It happened because . . . well, I forget the exact reason why, but I was upset with Mom because she wouldn't let me do something, or had scolded me, or something like that. At any rate, I decided the hell with it all, I was going to clean out some of the tall grass that was growing between our house and the Kutsunai's, and the canefield.

I had forgotten that I had sprinkled some poison chemicals there earlier. Now, this chemical that we used looked something like rock salt. You sprinkled it on the ground, and the weeds just died and dried. Touch a match to the weeds and they went up in a sparkling flame that had a life of its own.

So anyway, there were the tall, dry weeds, just begging to be cremated. So I cremated them. Did the strip next to the Kutsunai's house. No problem, so why not try the strip next to the canefield. Big problem. Bi-i-i-ig problem! The fire jumped into the canefield before my very eyes. As soon as I got over the shock, I raced to the house, hooked up the garden hose, turned on the water full-blast, and rushed to douse the spreading flames.

Picture this: A panicky kid holding a hose with the water shooting out the business end, arcing high into the air, and landing about 10 feet short of the fire. Talk about a picture of futility, this was it. Somebody should have taken a photo; it would have won an award.

Mom had seen what was going on from the kitchen and called the fire department. She came stomping out of the house, pointed her finger at me, then to the house, and ordered me to go inside. I began bawling and ran into the house, whimpering "I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it!"

With clanging bells and wailing sirens, two fire trucks arrived (almost instantaneously, it seemed). One situated itself on the street and hooked up to the fire hydrant on Waianuenue Avenue (helluva long hook-up).

The other rolled right up onto our back lawn, cutting deep tire ruts into the grass, ruts that remained as scars for years, as a grim reminder of my dark deed. It sure made mowing the lawn a lot harder in the ensuing years. Firemen jumped off the trucks, some dragging firehoses into the burning canefield, others with water tanks on their back. I came outside to watch, it was so fascinating. Why, it would have been awfully exciting had I not remembered that I was the one who caused all this commotion.

The next day, a small story appeared in the paper, something about a four-acre piece of canefield that caught fire. Nothing about the boy who started the conflagration. Once again, Dad's position saved me embarrassment.

Of course, Dad had to pick up the losses suffered by the owner of the canefield. Actually, the owner made some good money for the first time in years, since he was insured, and Dad's contribution helped insure a profit.

Dad took me to meet the owner so I could apologize to him. Nice Japanese man. When we got to his house, he and his friends were all sitting around, red-faced, with bottles of beer in their hands, and plenty of pupus on the table.

The entire conversation was pretty innocuous and went something like this:

Owner: "Eh, join us, Doc, get plenty pupus!"
Dad: "Thanks, but I just brought my son to apologize."
Me: "I'm sorry."
Owner: "No worry, no worry."
Dad: "Gotta go."
Owner: "Okay, thanks, Doc."
Me: "Bye."

Stimulating conversation, no? Dad and I were uncomfortable as hell, but the owner was feeling no pain. After all, Dad said, they were celebrating their first profit in years (left unsaid: "Thanks to my stupidity").

Yep, me and that canefield, we go 'way back.

It's no longer there, of course. The land was converted to pasture land when I was in high school, and the only excitement was when a cow escaped and went careening down Ekaha Street as we watched from the safety of our porches. Eventually, the pasture was transformed into residential lots, and families moved in, and kids romped where firemen once extinguished an unplanned, but exciting canefield fire.

I'm not sure what year it was, but I'll put these incidents here. Remember in the "Forward" section when I told you I was lucky? I have proof positive. One day after school, I stopped by the Hilo Food Town supermarket across the street from Dad's office for something -- candy, soda, I forget. Well, they had this drawing going on, so I scribbled in my name, address and phone number and dropped it in a box.

A little while later -- days, weeks? -- I passed the store again and checked the list of prizewinners posted outside the front door. There . . . there was my name. Ambling inside, I went to the checker to find out what I had won. I figured . . . a can of soup, or something like that. Nothing big, you know, just a small prize.

Well, I won second prize -- $75 worth of groceries. Mom and Dad were happy, of course, but it cost them a few bucks. You know how it is. Nobody in Hilo can claim any good fortune, especially one at a supermarket, especially at one where we didn't shop often (guilt trip?) without spending some money. I think they bought about $50 worth of extra food.

And then, that same year, I won a turkey at the old Pick and Pay supermarket. This one made us all feel a little better — we shopped there all the time anyway. No guilt trip this time.

My sophomore year at Hilo High started off quite auspiciously. We had an initiation day "riot," a devastating tidal wave, the first-ever (and last) Hilo High School carnival, and several bomb scares. You might say it was my most exciting year in high school.

The initiation thing was kind of interesting. During the first few weeks of school, everybody was worried about sophomore initiation. Stories were making the rounds about sophs who victimized by upperclassmen and were never heard from again. And when the rules were distributed, it seemed like our fears were justified. I forget what the girls had to do, but the boys had to come to school with burlap dresses on. We also had to have make-up on (lipstick, mascara, eyeliner, rouge and fingernail polish).

And, you had to do anything (within reason) that an upperclassman ordered you to do — carry books, act stupid in front of a crowd, sing songs at the top of your voice, you know, artistic things like that.

Plus, there was going to be an initiation day assembly and program after lunch.

I must have looked pretty pathetic, because a group of older guys called me over as soon as I got to school, and told me to stay with them and relax ("You're lucky, we're doing you a favor"). I hardly knew these guys and was just waiting for the rough stuff, but damned if they weren't actually protecting me. Forever grateful, I was.

Okay, so maybe it wasn't so bad. Okay, so maybe the underclassmen were having fun anyway. Well, you just know that a few rotten upperclassmen were going to spoil everything. It seems that some people had brought perfume in water pistols and were squirting the burlap-bedecked sophs at every opportunity. Plus, some were getting paddled on the butt as well.

I guess it was about 10 a.m. or so, between classes, when the principal — Larry Cappellas — announced over the public address system that because the upperclassmen couldn't act like responsible citizens, initiation activities were canceled.

For some reason, everybody got pissed off. The whole school assembled in the quad area. Nobody would go to class. Chants were started and died. Gary Sato and I started clapping our hands in cadence. In less than a minute, everyone was clapping along with us. Our personal demonstration soon withered and died. The student body officers came out to plead with the students to go back to class. The student body president herself announced that she was going back to class, and that if she looked back and nobody was following her, she would resign from office. She started off, looked back, shook her head because nobody was following her, and stomped off. I don't think she ever resigned from office -- she was all blow and no show.

People got up and made speeches damning Mr. Cappellas. A group formed and tried to negotiate a pow-wow with the principal, but (the rumor was) he had locked himself in his office and refused to speak to anyone.

Finally, someone came on the PA system and said that if everyone would go to their homerooms, Mr. Cappellas would talk to the student representatives. We were all played out anyway, so slowly, everyone went to their homerooms.

Of course, nothing came of the high-level talks. School was dismissed for the rest of the day, and I had to ride home on the sampan bus with a bunch of old ladies who looked at me like I was a drag queen or something.

The next day, the Tribune-Herald proclaimed in two-inch high letters, "RIOT AT HILO HIGH!" The reporter went on to write about the unruly students that yelled and screamed and threw things at the teachers -- a bad case of poor, inaccurate reporting.

A few days after that, a letter from our so-called "If-you-don't-follow-me-I'm-going-to-resign" student body president lambasted the paper for its sensationalism and irresponsible reporting.

A week later, nobody cared any more. Initiation was dead.

A huge tidal wave -- 50-footer -- whacked Hilo that year. It rumbled into town from Chile, and turned sleepy Hilo downtown into a bunch of twisted wreckage.

Most of the Kamehameha Avenue stores suffered some damage (the closer you got to Waianuenue Avenue, the lighter the damage), but the brunt of the devastation came from Mamo Street down to the Waialua River and Waiakea town.

I mean, where once there was an uninterrupted line of stores, there now was nothing standing along Kamehameha Avenue. The Boy's Club was gone. The old Pick And Pay supermarket was gone. Mamo Theater was still there, but the Mooheau Theater was nowhere to be seen. The Hilo Theater was gutted (witnesses said the wave completely covered the 50-foot-tall theater).

Waiakea Town was gone. The new Cafe 100 was gone. Dozens of fishing sampans were gone. Hilo's only bowling alley was gone. Sun Sun Lau Chop Suey was gone. The Hobby House was gone. Moto's Inn was gone.

"The Wave," as it came to be known, rumbled in while most of Hilo was asleep in darkness. Actually, I didn't even know we were expecting a tidal wave. I woke up that morning to a voice saying, "Katie died." That was Dad. He had just come back from the hospital where he and other doctors had spent hours tending to the injured. In all, 56 people died that night, most of them because they didn't heed the warnings, and either stayed in their waterfront homes, or went downtown to watch the wave come in.

Katie was a waitress at Standard Drug. Wonderful Irish lady who had married a local Japanese. Everyone knew her, and she knew everyone. She died that morning despite Dad's attempts to save her life.

Through my drowsiness, I pieced together fragments of the story. Mom notice I had wakened, and filled me in on what had gone on in the wee hours of the morning. It was quite dreadful.

Of course, we didn't have a TV station in Hilo, so we had to rely on the radio reports. The announcements rolled in. All school was canceled until further notice as Hilo

High School was being used as an emergency shelter (school wouldn't re-open for a couple of weeks). Boil your water before drinking in case the pipes had cracked and supplies were contaminated. Electricity will be turned back on as soon as possible. Volunteers were needed to help recover missing people from wrecked buildings. Once those who could be saved were rescued, and once most of those who died were recovered, the clean-up began. Students (boys especially) who wanted to help were asked to report to Hilo High to get tetanus shots before starting, and to bring gloves and shovels. I didn't go.

We heard disturbing stories about the carnage. About the man who was found dead in bed with a woman (not his wife). About heads separating from bodies as they were being taken from wreckage. About the stink of rotten human flesh. About the people who had died, including my friend Mike Masutani's sister.

The newspaper was filled with pictures -- some horrific, many fascinating. Rubble and wreckage. Parking meters bent horizontal to the ground by the force of the water. Familiar landmark buildings no longer there. A broken clock stopped at the exact moment the wave hit. People cleaning up.

Dad suggested that I call my classmate Sylvia Hara's father, who owned Standard Drug, and offer to help them clean up. When I called, Mr. Hara asked if my Dad had told me to call, and I lied. I said no. Thanks, he said, but they had things under control, and I was a good kid for calling. I've always felt a guilty that I never played even a minor role in the clean-up efforts.

The bridge to Coconut Island was washed out as well. It was the first bridge ever to connect with the island. Up to the time it was constructed, you had to go over by rowboat -- quite an experience in itself -- or wait until low tide and wade over, ever vigilant for deep water channels. A new one was built to replace it, one with modifications to withstand any future tsunamis.

A few days after the tidal wave, when Kamehameha Avenue was re-opened, Dad took us downtown to look at the wreckage. Every single building from Mamo Street to Waiakea Town was gutted, falling, or completely down. The town sort of reminded me of the canefield in the back of our house, while the harvesters were working on it. And yet, with all the devastation and ruin around, you could see people cleaning up the stores, washing down the streets, installing new glass windows, painting their storefronts, and putting their lives back in order.

Hilo changed a lot after the tidal wave. The whole town moved back, up to higher ground. Tidal wave safety zones were set up, and the town adapted.