Albert Louis Stanley was born August 31, 1930 in Hilo, Hawai'i. His father, Clyde LeGrand Stanley, was originally from Missouri. He journeyed to Hawai'i as a young man in 1916 in search of excitement Settling flrst in Hilo working for Hawaiian Dredging Company, Clyde Stanley married Rosina Bassler, a public health nurse in Hilo. The couple eventually moved to Laupahoehoe, where he worked as a maintenance superintendent for Hawaiian Consolidated Railway, Ltd. After suffering a crippling accident in 1942, Clyde Stanley became a well-known and prolific woodworker. Albert Stanley and his three sisters grew up in Laupahoehoe. He attended Laupahoehoe School through twelfth grade and graduated in 1948. Following graduation, Stanley worked as an ironworker for companies that converted scrap steel from the defunct Hawaiian Consolidated Railway, Ltd. From 1952 to 1956, he worked for the Hawai'i National Guard in Laupahoehoe. In 1957, he went to Midway and was a storekeeper for Hawaiian Dredging Company. Beginning in 1959, Stanley attended an airplane mechanics school at Northrup Aviation in California. In 1960, he began his thirty-five year career with Continental Airlines in Honolulu. Retired since 1995, Stanley lives in Honolulu. He and his former wife have five children and seven grandchildren. Interviewed in his Honolulu apartment, Stanley recalled the tragic events of April 1, 1946. A Laupahoehoe School sophomore at the time, he remembers being driven to school by his mother. Halfway down the winding road leading to the school, Stanley noticed the peculiar behavior of the ocean. Stopping the car at that point, he witnessed the tsunami's destructive force on the school and peninsula.

Scope and Content Note
Hilo-born man tells the story of his father from young rail rider to paraplegic woodworker. Being Caucasian in multi-ethnic Laupahoehoe, he discusses discrimination and pidgin English use. He recalls watching the incoming 1946 tidal wave from the road above the school and witnessing the death and destruction that followed.

Program Note:  
This interview is part of the Center for Oral History's project Tsunamis Remembered: Oral Histories of Survivors and Observers in Hawai‘i. Interviews from this project are available in the Center's ScholarSpace open access repository.

The Center for Oral History (COH), in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, collects, documents, preserves and highlights the recollections of Native Hawaiians and the multi-ethnic people of Hawaiʻi. It produces oral histories and interpretive historical materials about lifeways, key historic events, social movements and Hawaiʻi’s role in the globalizing world, for the widest possible use.