After the Bombs: Honolulu's Japanese Hospital

In the tense hours and days after Pearl Harbor, young nurse Chiyoko Kasai—born to Japanese immigrants—watched the Japanese Hospital of Honolulu become the only hospital and nursing school in the United States placed under military occupation. She never forgot what followed.

"Soon after the bombs started, the head nurse came around and said, ‘Girls, go to each room, talk to the patients. Tell them not to worry, that everything’s going to be all right.’ So that’s what we did. We went room by room trying to calm them down.”

“Someone went on the roof to check the planes,” she said, her tone hardening. “They saw the red circle on them. We knew then—they were Japanese planes.” Chiyo’s hands clenched tightly in her lap as she added, “Temporary beds filled the hallways. Civilians were coming in, injured by stray shells—even schoolchildren. Twenty-three local Japanese, just in one day.”

“And then, within days the military came. Even though we immediately open our doors to help the injured, they still took over everything—hospital, dormitories, even the training school. Suddenly, it wasn’t the Japanese Hospital anymore. They renamed it the 147th General Hospital O‘ahu. Just like that.”

She shook her head, her voice edged with both resignation and defiance. “They even ripped down the copper plates with the Japanese names on them— Nihonjin Byoin for the Japanese Hospital and Onshi Kinenkan meaning Imperial Gift Memorial Building. But we could still see the outlines on the wall.”

"It was about erasing us—our identity as Japanese. No more wearing yukata and geta. We couldn’t even speak Japanese anymore, not even to our Issei patients, the ones who didn’t know any English. It didn’t make sense, but we had to follow orders. Later on, they still refused to call it the Japanese Hospital—it was named Kuakini instead.”