Voices to Courage: Hawai‘i's One Puka Puka Heroes
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Updated: 6 hours ago
If you were among the fortunate souls to have gotten a seat for one of the two sold-out performances of “Voices to Courage: Hawaiʻi’s One Puka Puka Heroes” on July 11 and 12 at Mānoa Valley Theatre (MVT), you lucked out, for you saw six bright, talented, and hard-working middle and high school students put on an amazing performance that told the story of the 100th Infantry Battalion.
With theatrical guidance from MVT artistic director Rob Duval and assistant director Eva Rogers, a Mid-Pacific Institute alumna now attending New York University, the students researched, scripted, rehearsed and performed their work. Three weeks ago, it was a story they barely knew. But they were fast learners who took the stories of the 100th Infantry Battalion soldiers to heart.
The students — Myles, Maggie, Kazuya, Jack, Kaileah and David – represented a range of schooling experiences: public (Mililani High School, Campbell High School), private (Mid-Pacific Institute and ʻIolani School) and home schooling. Two of the students had connections to 100th Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat Team soldiers: Kazuya’s great-grandfather, Yatsuji Nakagawa (Co. C), served in the 100th and was awarded the Purple Heart, Bronze Star, and Combat Infantryman Badge. Maggie’s grandfather, the late U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye, served in the 442nd and in 2000, was among 20 Japanese Americans who were awarded the Medal of Honor, America’s highest military honor.
The students learned the 100th Infantry Battalion soldiers’ story by reading their history and listening to descendants share memories of their fathers and grandfathers. They then incorporated those stories into a narrative titled, “Voices to Courage: Hawaiʻi’s One Puka Puka Heroes.” In brief scenes, the students covered so much history: Edward Ikuma’s (HQ Co.) story about the 100th’s lonely departure for an unknown destination in June of 1942 and his return to Hawaiʻi in 1945 with no one to welcome him home. Recognition of the Native Hawaiian and hapa men who served in the 100th Battalion. The 100th’s Aloha baseball team’s games in Wisconsin, where the girls swooned over the ukulele-strumming Hawaiian Serenaders. Capt. Katsumi Kometani’s (Medics) pitching the idea of collecting $2 every payday to save for a clubhouse when they returned home. Lt. Col. Farrant Turner’s (HQ) appeal to his superiors in Algeria to let the 100th fight in Europe rather than pull guard duty. Songbird Joy Takeshita’s (later Teraoka) [widow of Denis Teraoka (Co. D)] singing in the incarceration camps on the continental U.S. during the war. After being injured in Italy, Thomas Taro Higa (Co. A) recovering and then going to Okinawa and persuading the civilians to surrender rather than perish in caves where they were hiding. Returning to Hawaiʻi after the war, they were determined to make positive changes by getting involved in politics and opening businesses such as Central Pacific Bank. They were brief scenes, but provided enough information for the audience to grasp the unit’s story.
“I thought the students did an exceptional job,” said Ruth Otake, a retired massage therapist who attended the Sunday performance. “I got the impression that they understood what the soldiers of the 100th experienced and they could relate it to themselves, their families and their communities.”
Mary Kunmi Yu Danico, director of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Center for Oral History, said the performance “exceeded my expectations.” “The ways in which the students interpreted the stories of the 100th Battalion and their descendants was not only touching, personal and reflective, but it also showed the care and a sense of respect that the students show toward the stories,” Danico said.
“It’s incredible that in such a short period of time these young people from age 14 through 16 were able to capture the life stories of those who went through an incredible ordeal, lost many friends, and returned home to a country that saw them as ‘friendly enemies.’” The writing, production and the use of videos showed a thoughtful interpretation of the stories, she added.
Danico was seated next to Kahu David Turner, a grandson of the 100th Infantry Battalion’s first commanding officer, Lt. Col. Farrant Turner at the Sunday performance. She said he was “truly touched” by the performance.
She also saw audience members wiping away tears. “This story taught so many of us the importance of ensuring that we preserve the memories of those who sacrificed so much. I know that the students learned a great deal from this summer experience. They gave a tremendous gift to the audience.”
Retired Hawaiʻi Bicycling League executive director and former UH Center for Oral History director Chad Taniguchi said it was “extremely gratifying” to see the students grasp the facts and stories of the 100th Battalion. “I wish all people, especially the young, could see the play or a video of it,” he said. Taniguchi was also surprised and impressed that the students had included the story of his Uncle Seiso Kamishita’s (Co. B) exchange with his parents in the play.
Much of the heavy lifting for “Voices …” was performed by project facilitator Mariko Miho, daughter of 442nd Regimental Combat Team veteran Katsugo Miho. Mariko said her father always reminded her that the 100th Battalion soldiers were the 442nd’s “big brothers.” Her partner in the project was retired ʻIolani School history teacher Alan Suemori, who provided the historical backdrop of the Hawaiʻi the 100th Battalion soldiers left behind. The duo also made sure the students worked on full stomachs of Spam musubi, even Kats Miho’s chicken hekka, cookies, cakes and other snacks.
Mahalo to KHON2 for this article about the Voices to Courage project.
Thank you to Mariko Miho for sharing her reflections on the making of this project.
Voices to Courage: Hawaiʻi's One Puka Puka Heroes
A Reflection on the Making of the Project
by Mariko Miho, Facilitator and Story Producer Daughter of Katsugo Miho, member of the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion, 442nd Regimental Combat Team [daughter of Katsugo Miho (442nd RCT/522nd FAB)]
Looking back across the arc of this project, a few real turning points stand out — not just dates on a calendar, but moments where the shape of the work itself changed. What follows is not a chronology so much as a map of the pivots that made Voices to Courage what it has become.
From Story Collection to Living Covenant
Early on, this project could easily have become a straightforward oral history exercise — collect the descendants' stories, hand them to students, stage them. But the framing shifted early toward something more architectural. The Four Worlds framework, anchored by the two-dollar covenant made at Camp McCoy, gave the project a spiritual center that was structural, not just historical.
That covenant — men agreeing, quietly, to set money aside for each other's families before they had proven themselves in combat — became the seed from which the whole project's emotional logic grew. It is why "Values are only real when they cost you something" could become the thesis of the piece, rather than merely a tagline.
A Covenant of Roles, Not a Hierarchy
A quieter but important pivot was resisting the temptation to over-title people. The title "Keeper of Kuleana" was offered and declined in favor of story producer — a title more honest about the actual division of labor. That clarity mattered downstream: Alan Suemori remained the historical authority, not the dramatist; Rob Duval remained the artist drawing out student voices, not a history teacher standing in front of a classroom. I felt my role was to weave the story threads carefully, often "bobbing" back and forth between different voices.
Ramona Ho's Research Widens the Circle
The discovery of eighteen men of Hawaiian ancestry, keiki o ka ʻāina, within the original 1,432 was not an addendum. It fundamentally expanded who the "we" in this story includes. It moved the piece from an AJA (Americans of Japanese ancestry) story to a genuinely multiethnic Hawaiʻi story — a shift now written into the opening lines of the production itself, where kānaka maoli, Korean, Chinese, and Filipino draftees stand beside the men of Japanese ancestry, led by haole officers who chose to command them.
The Clubhouse Interviews
The descendant interviews at the 100th Infantry Battalion Clubhouse were the hinge point where this project stopped being about the past and became about transmission — the actual handoff from the sons and daughters to the students. Everything downstream flows from stories that surfaced in that room: the opening monologue, the research into the men lost at Sant'Angelo d'Alife, the story of a friendship that began in a military hospital and helped shape a young man's path into politics and banking.
This may be the single most important design decision in the entire project — more than the script, more than the staging. Students can be told that 1,432 men shipped out in 1942, but that fact lives in the abstract until a descendant, speaking not as a historian but as a son or daughter, describes what a father did or did not say, what silences sat in a living room for decades. The moment history arrives through someone's actual grief, humor, or unfinished questions, it stops being information and becomes inheritance.
When our descendants gathered at the Clubhouse to share their fathers' stories over the past several months, something happened that no script could have manufactured. The students weren't going to hear history explained to them. They would be watching someone still working through it. Watching a son or daughter ask, out loud, why didn't he tell me or he didn't tell me anything about the war. And realizing that even the people closest to these men never had all the answers either.
There is a quiet gift in this, too. Descendants arrived at the Clubhouse with questions they themselves had always wanted to ask — meaning even the people closest to these soldiers never had full access to their fathers' interior lives. That tells the students it is normal not to have all the answers, and that curiosity itself, showing up and listening and asking, is the respectful act, not a violation of the men's privacy.
Watching someone else's unfinished process of carrying a legacy is likely what gives students the felt sense that they, too, are now being handed something to carry, rather than simply a story to perform. In that light, the descendant interviews function as a living fourth beat beyond the production's three movements: the world after what was carried home, where the cost surfaces in a second generation and is now being handed to a third. Without the descendants in the room, the students would be performing something. With them, the students are receiving something.
Learning to Speak in Two Registers
A less visible but genuinely significant craft milestone came in the final weeks of drafting — recognizing that the printed program and the spoken opening needed to diverge. Dense, layered prose that reads beautifully on a page collapses when spoken aloud by a young actor standing alone on a stage. Splitting these into two texts with two different rhythms, rather than forcing a single text to do both jobs, is the kind of precision the audience will never see and is exactly why the piece will land.
Where This Is Heading
The workshop and the performances that close it are the first full expression of something that has been quietly maturing for more than twenty-five years — since discovering my uncle's wartime diary and aunt's postwar reflections. What is worth naming is that the next project on the horizon, whether podcast, book, or documentary series, centered on the 100th Infantry Battalion's role in changing Hawaiʻi postwar, is not separate from this one. It is the same kuleana, continued into its next chapter.
They did not go for broke out of obligation. They went for broke out of love and aloha — for each other, their families, their communities, their homes, and their country.
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This article has been reprised from the July 2026 100th Infantry Battalion Veterans "Puka Puka Parade" article, written by Karleen Chinen [daughter of Wallace Seiko Chinen (Co. D)]. Back issues of the Puka Puka Parade can be viewed online, courtesy of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa eVols digitial repository — the most recent issues available to the public can be viewed here: https://hdl.handle.net/10524/86866. For more about the 100th Infantry Battalion Veterans Puka Puka Parade, please visit https://www.100thibv.org/post/puka-puka-parade-newsletter.