A Molokai resident describes the waves which washed ashore on April 1, 1946 and the destruction of beachfront houses in Kalaupapa.

Herbert Sadamu Nishimoto was born June 15, 1929 in N"mole, Hawai'i. He is the youngest of Senichi Nishimoto and Misano Masukawa Nishimoto's five children.

A Puunene-born woman speaks of her family and growing up in Spanish B Camp. She describes teenage life when she attended St. Anthony's School in the 1950s. Also mentioned are her jobs, marriage, and children. She presents a detailed account of her escape from the 1960 tsunami which inundated Kahului and tells of the major cleanup which followed.

An adopted man describes growing up in the close-knit Hawaiian village of Hamoa, Hana, Maui. Age eleven in 1946, he recalls the tidal wave, which took his adopted mother and destroyed his home.

James "Jimmy" Low was born January 24, 1930 in Hilo. Beginning in 1926, his parents, King Yong Low of Kwangtung, China, and Mary Chow Low of Hilo, ran a grocery store on Keawe Street. 'Three years later, they branched out and opened the original Sun Sun Lau Chop Sui House on Haili Street. In 1939, the restaurant relocated to Kamehameha Avenue in downtown Hilo. Low, the fourth of seven children, grew up around the restaurant. As soon.as he was old enough, he helped his parents cook in the kitchen and set up for banquets.

James Tatsumi Ohashi was born March 2, 1928 in a sugar plantation camp in Kipii-Hule'ia, Kaua'i. The seventh of eight children of Bunjiro Ohashi and Ima K.anemori Ohashi, he attended Hule'ia Grammar School and graduated from Kaua'i High School. After receiving his degree from the University of Hawai'i, Ohashi enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. He rose to the rank of colonel. He is a veteran of the Vietnam War and also served in Japan before retiring in 1973. Ohashi is an avid and prolific writer and a student of local history.

Born in Puunene, a woman describes growing up in a plantation town, Japanese domestics in the household, and schooling at English-standard Kaunoa School. A Punahou School alumna, she describes her Mainland college experiences, including witnessing racial discrimination. She details the Speckelsville beachfront house her parents built with the help of a Japanese stone mason. A child in 1946, she explains how she, her family, and house guests escaped the tsunami.

A Maui man remembers life in Skill Camp, Paia, Maui. He outlines his family ancestry. He and his family moved to isolated Maliko Bay, where they escaped the 1946 tsunami by climbing a hill. He witnessed the destruction of his home by the waves.

The oldest of two children born to Willard Hogle Branch and Elizabeth Mason Branch, Jeanne Branch Johnston was born in Hilo on December 2, 1939. Johnston's maternal grandfather, Charles William Mason, was the inventor of Canec, a fiberboard made from sugarcane bagasse. Mason became the superintendent of Hawaiian Cane Products Company, Ltd., located in Hilo near the site of the Waiakea Mill Company. After spending her early childhood in Hilo, Honolulu, Midway Island, and California, Johnston and her mother returned to Hilo in 1944.

Joe A. Joseph, Portuguese-Hawaiian, was born in Kalihi on March 10, 1913.  His father, Antone Joseph ( 11Antone Joe 11 ) owned a dairy located near the present site of Kalihi Shopping Center. As a youth, Joe helped his father at the dairy. Joe attended Kalihi-Waena Elementary School and completed the ninth grade at Kalakaua Intermediate. In 1932, he began work as a surveyor at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard. Just prior to World War II, Joe moonlighted as a nightclub bouncer. Until 1945, Joe, along with his brothers, helped at the family-run dairy.