Lualualei Report

Twenty years old and I am a Navy man assigned to shore duty at Radio Station  Lualualei on the Leeward side Oahu. Hawaii.

I arrive just in time to help celebrate statehood.


Hawaii is wonderful! Smells good. So WARM. So very beautiful--and the people seem so lighthearted.

I am a "Ship's  Serviceman" rating which means I work at the little store which takes care of some of the basic needs of the sailors and their wives who, with their kids, have joined their husbands to live on the station--there are no female sailors at this time. I also work at the little bar where some of the sailors spend most of their off-duty hours and drive a liberty-bus some nights.

I ask my officer boss if I can write and publish a station newsletter in my own spare time --just for fun and as long as I am off the clock.

He gives me the go-ahead and I am an editor again. I can use Navy paper and their copy machine free.

My "Lualualei Report" is filled with information I think my fellow swabs would like to know about--the liberty bus schedule to Kaneohe Marine Base where they can catch the liberty bus on to Honolulu and Waikiki and how they can get to the navy R&R (Rest and Recuperation) bar at Waianae Beach.

I put in some touristic tips and a little history of Hawaii and things like that.

Why do I do it? It's fun. Keeps me busy and my mind on literature instead of Navy griping. And mostly I guess because I am just another driven journalist!''

Since I am serving my active duty time as a Navy Reserve man, I get permission to take a local discharge after serving twenty-one months of a two-year hitch and head for the University Of Hawaii just across the island of Oahu in Manoa Valley.

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