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Hawaii: Woven Together in the Aloha State (with Mike Daniels) · Stories That Live In Us

• 0:00
  Mike Daniels: Growing up in Hawaii, I can say that I've met a lot of different cultures from all over the world, because it is a melting pot and it's really possible for people to live together in peace.
• 0:14
  Crista Cowan: Stories that Live In Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present and future.
• 0:22
  Crista Cowan: I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist.
• 0:26
  Crista Cowan: Counting down to the upcoming celebration of America's 250th birthday, you'll meet families from each state whose stories are woven into the very fabric of America Tales of immigration, migration, courage and community that remind us that when we tell our stories, we strengthen the bonds that connect us.
• 0:46
  Crista Cowan: So join me for season two as we discover, from sea to shining sea, the stories that live in us.
• 0:55
  Crista Cowan: Back in 1976, the summer, I was four years old.
• 1:00
  Crista Cowan: I wasn't even four years old, I was three.
• 1:02
  Crista Cowan: That summer, I hadn't turned four, yet the United States celebrated our 200th anniversary of becoming a country.
• 1:10
  Crista Cowan: Now, my memories from that summer are a little sketchy.
• 1:13
  Crista Cowan: Here's what I remember.
• 1:15
  Crista Cowan: I remember that my mother made me a red, white and blue dress that I just felt beautiful in, and it had a twirly skirt.
• 1:22
  Crista Cowan: She also made my brother and sister, who were twins and were not quite a year old, matching little outfits, and then she made herself a matching dress and my dad a matching tie, and that was part of our summer wear.
• 1:39
  Crista Cowan: That summer, I remember that we went to Disneyland on the 4th of July 1976, with the rest of the country.
• 1:48
  Crista Cowan: I have never, in all of my years going to Disneyland, seen so many people there, and I remember that my mom lost her wedding ring that day and it was a pretty traumatic thing for her and so, therefore, for me, for me.
• 2:07
  Crista Cowan: So I have these weird little memories burned into my brain of the bicentennial celebration of America from when I was a kid.
• 2:11
  Crista Cowan: And now here we are, coming up on July 4th 2026, where we will celebrate America 250.
• 2:20
  Crista Cowan: That's what it's being called everywhere, and so I wanted to bring you stories from every state, because place is a character in story, and so as we tell our family stories, we often root them in a place.
• 2:38
  Crista Cowan: Whether that place is a state or a farm or a home or a ship, that place becomes a character.
• 2:45
  Crista Cowan: So for the next 50 weeks, states are going to become characters in our stories.
• 2:51
  Crista Cowan: My first story is the first state we're going to talk about, but it was the last state admitted to the union, and that's how we're going to do this, in reverse order of how they became states.
• 3:03
  Crista Cowan: And that's how we're going to do this, in reverse order of how they became states.
• 3:06
  Crista Cowan: So today we are talking about the state of Hawaii.
• 3:07
  Crista Cowan: My guest is a dear friend.
• 3:09
  Crista Cowan: His name is Mike Daniels.
• 3:10
  Crista Cowan: We worked together here at Ancestry back at the very beginning of my career here, and at the time he was also the mayor of the little town Pleasant Grove that I live in, and so he and I have had opportunities in the couple of decades since he left Ancestry to continually interact with each other within our community.
• 3:31
  Crista Cowan: He was raised in Hawaii, has family and businesses still in Hawaii, and so his connection to that place is very much a part of his family story.
• 3:43
  Crista Cowan: I hope you'll enjoy my conversation with Mike Daniels.
• 3:46
  Crista Cowan: How long ago was it that we worked together?
• 3:48
  Mike Daniels: Oh my gosh, it's been about 20, 18 to 20 years.
• 3:52
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, I mean, I've been here at Ancestry for 21 years.
• 3:55
  Crista Cowan: I was shortly after that, so wow, but I do still see you around Pleasant Grove All community.
• 4:01
  Crista Cowan: Which is kind of fun.
• 4:02
  Crista Cowan: As a matter of fact, I think even when I worked with you, like you were at the mayor the first time at the time, that's true.
• 4:09
  Crista Cowan: So, yeah, I love that we come from this small community and it's a community that I have deep roots in.
• 4:16
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, even though I was raised in California, my grandmother on my dad's side, her mom, was born in Pleasant Grove.
• 4:24
  Crista Cowan: Oh really.
• 4:24
  Mike Daniels: Yeah.
• 4:25
  Crista Cowan: And so the fact that I live there now has always been kind of a fun connection for me Well simple.
• 4:30
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, but I love that I have that connection with you, but, as your shirt so proudly proclaims, you are not originally from Pleasant Grove, where were you born and raised?
• 4:40
  Mike Daniels: So I was born in Boston or Chelsea, massachusetts, and we zigzagged around the US because my dad was in the military, which just happened to be there at the time, and then we moved to Hawaii and I turned four.
• 4:51
  Crista Cowan: Oh, okay, well, there you go, but your mom was from Hawaii.
• 4:54
  Mike Daniels: My mother is from the north side of the Big Island called Kohala.
• 4:59
  Crista Cowan: Okay, Very cool.
• 4:59
  Crista Cowan: Now when you worked here at Ancestry, you and I did some family history digging we did On your dad's side and tell me what you knew before, or if you remember what we knew before we dug into that I knew very little.
• 5:12
  Mike Daniels: It was really hard to find information on my Jewish side of the family.
• 5:16
  Mike Daniels: It's just it was gone.
• 5:18
  Mike Daniels: You know, and as much research as I did, and I had friends that were really good at genealogy.
• 5:23
  Mike Daniels: They'd take me up and say I found a whole book and we'd go through there.
• 5:27
  Mike Daniels: We'd be there three hours nothing nothing.
• 5:29
  Mike Daniels: And then you know you started talking about my history and I was like maybe you can help me.
• 5:35
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, yeah, love that.
• 5:37
  Crista Cowan: So tell us about your dad, like, do you remember, like what stories he told you growing up or what you knew about his parents as you were growing up?
• 5:46
  Mike Daniels: Yeah, so it's a very interesting story.
• 5:48
  Mike Daniels: My dad was born in Boston, and at age six, my grandfather and his brother so my granduncle they got hit by a train while they were running their truck.
• 5:59
  Mike Daniels: It got stuck on the tracks and they were instantly killed, and so my grandmother became a single mom of two and yeah my dad at 16 decided he wanted to go see the world from a porthole, so he volunteered for the for World War II.
• 6:15
  Crista Cowan: And was he in the Navy?
• 6:16
  Mike Daniels: He was Okay, yeah, he was in the Navy.
• 6:18
  Crista Cowan: Okay, and then he ended up in Hawaii.
• 6:23
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 6:23
  Mike Daniels: So after that he was stationed in different places and they transferred him to Honolulu, where he went to the beach one day and met my mother on the beach what?
• 6:34
  Mike Daniels: And he went up to her and said hey, you look like you could use some swimming lessons.
• 6:38
  Mike Daniels: And she slapped him.
• 6:39
  Mike Daniels: Oh, and here we are.
• 6:43
  Crista Cowan: That's amazing.
• 6:44
  Crista Cowan: How long after the war was that?
• 6:45
  Mike Daniels: Oh my goodness.
• 6:46
  Mike Daniels: In the 50s.
• 6:48
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 6:49
  Mike Daniels: Mid-50s.
• 6:50
  Crista Cowan: I love that.
• 6:50
  Crista Cowan: And then your mom, but her parents are not from Hawaii.
• 6:54
  Mike Daniels: No, Both parents immigrated from Japan during the time when Hawaii was looking for sugarcane workers, and so Grandpa came first.
• 7:03
  Mike Daniels: He wasn't married.
• 7:04
  Mike Daniels: And then, after being here for a while, he bought a picture, bride, and she did the same on her end.
• 7:11
  Mike Daniels: So they met the first day on the docks in Honolulu and then they got married in a mass wedding that afternoon.
• 7:19
  Crista Cowan: What I've heard stories of picture brides but I didn't realize it was that fast yeah for that one it was.
• 7:24
  Crista Cowan: Wow, I've heard stories of picture breads but I didn't realize it was that fast.
• 7:26
  Crista Cowan: Yeah for that one.
• 7:27
  Mike Daniels: it was Wow.
• 7:27
  Mike Daniels: Did you know either of?
• 7:28
  Crista Cowan: them?
• 7:28
  Crista Cowan: No, I never got to meet them.
• 7:29
  Crista Cowan: Do you know about how old your mom was when they passed?
• 7:31
  Mike Daniels: It was within four years of when I was born.
• 7:33
  Mike Daniels: Okay.
• 7:33
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, and did your mom ever talk about them or tell stories about them?
• 7:37
  Crista Cowan: Lots of stories.
• 7:38
  Mike Daniels: Yeah, my grandmother had 13 children, 11 of them lived.
• 7:44
  Mike Daniels: She was number 12 out of 13.
• 7:46
  Mike Daniels: And so I asked her you know, hey, did your parents love each other?
• 7:51
  Mike Daniels: I mean, they just got buried right off the boat and she said they learned to love each other.
• 7:57
  Mike Daniels: She'd asked her that question and her mom said you learned to love each other.
• 8:03
  Crista Cowan: Very interesting story.
• 8:05
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, wow.
• 8:05
  Crista Cowan: And so you didn't know those grandparents, but your mom shared stories.
• 8:09
  Crista Cowan: When did they like?
• 8:11
  Crista Cowan: Did they immediately move to the Big Island after they got married?
• 8:14
  Crista Cowan: Was that a?
• 8:15
  Mike Daniels: He was already living there.
• 8:17
  Crista Cowan: Got it.
• 8:17
  Mike Daniels: And they just came over to meet their brides.
• 8:19
  Crista Cowan: Got it, because that's where the port was.
• 8:20
  Crista Cowan: Okay yeah, did all of your mom's siblings live in Hawaii, or did they scatter?
• 8:24
  Mike Daniels: Yes, no, they.
• 8:25
  Mike Daniels: In fact they ended up living next door to each other in some cases.
• 8:28
  Crista Cowan: I love that yeah.
• 8:29
  Mike Daniels: So when we had a family gathering just the family, it was 50 people or more.
• 8:33
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, yeah, I love that After, so your.
• 8:49
  Mike Daniels: My dad because he's a Caucasian and he's pure Japanese and you know, the whole thing with the war just didn't go too well.
• 8:56
  Mike Daniels: But one day he decided to have a sake drinking contest with grandpa and he held his own, and so grandpa started to respect him because of that.
• 9:06
  Mike Daniels: Then he'd take him to the baseball games and they'd eat peanuts and he loved that.
• 9:10
  Mike Daniels: So they got along.
• 9:12
  Crista Cowan: So grandpa warmed up to your dad.
• 9:13
  Crista Cowan: Did grandma also have an issue with your dad?
• 9:16
  Mike Daniels: We don't really have that part of the story.
• 9:18
  Mike Daniels: Okay, I'm not sure we really ever discussed that or if it was brought up, but she died right about that time, you know, when they got married and everything she, she was gone.
• 9:29
  Crista Cowan: How hard for your mom yeah, very hard To like be starting a new family and not have her mother.
• 9:33
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, yeah, did her older sisters compensate?
• 9:38
  Mike Daniels: Yep, yeah, they did.
• 9:40
  Crista Cowan: The aunts.
• 9:40
  Mike Daniels: That's why we would get together and have parties.
• 9:42
  Mike Daniels: Got it.
• 9:43
  Mike Daniels: It could be in more, okay, yeah.
• 9:45
  Crista Cowan: That's so.
• 9:45
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, I think one of the benefits of large families is there's always someone there to compensate for stuff and, like you, only had six kids, but I was raised in a family of five children.
• 9:56
  Crista Cowan: There's still some of that, even going on today, now that we're adults, which I think is one of the important things about big families.
• 10:03
  Mike Daniels: So in Hawaii for years there's been that cultural unrest, and then the war and everything caused a lot of difficulties and I was always wondering what would be the catalyst for bridging that gap, especially between tourists and local people that felt very strongly that Hawaii should be for Hawaiians only.
• 10:22
  Mike Daniels: And then I started to notice that if anybody is older than you, the people that were younger would call them either uncle or auntie, and they started doing that with me, uncle, auntie.
• 10:33
  Mike Daniels: And then we went to a luau with some friends and the people that were younger would call them either uncle or auntie, and they started doing that with me, uncle, auntie.
• 10:36
  Mike Daniels: And then we went to a luau with some friends and the people that were putting it on said the rest of us are all cousins.
• 10:41
  Mike Daniels: So everybody, everybody, you're all cousins.
• 10:44
  Mike Daniels: So it became very natural and easy, a very easy way to kind of get over something like that, yeah, and that's it goes from being just your aunties to they are the aunties for everyone.
• 10:55
  Mike Daniels: Everyone is an auntie or an uncle.
• 10:57
  Crista Cowan: I love that.
• 10:57
  Crista Cowan: I want to be everybody's auntie.
• 11:00
  Mike Daniels: Yes.
• 11:02
  Crista Cowan: Talk to me about.
• 11:03
  Crista Cowan: Did you always live, did you move to the Big Island or did you live elsewhere in Hawaii?
• 11:07
  Mike Daniels: No, I've, we've only.
• 11:08
  Mike Daniels: I only remember living on Oahu.
• 11:10
  Crista Cowan: Okay, yeah, and that's the only place when on.
• 11:12
  Mike Daniels: Oahu.
• 11:13
  Mike Daniels: So we started in Waipahu, which is a town out to the west and south or north of Honolulu, and then we relocated into Pearl City and then finally over into Kailua.
• 11:25
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 11:25
  Mike Daniels: Yeah, which is a really nice town.
• 11:27
  Mike Daniels: Is it, and then we ended up in Kaneohe.
• 11:31
  Crista Cowan: Kailua is where one of your theaters is.
• 11:32
  Crista Cowan: Yes, yeah, I remember.
• 11:33
  Crista Cowan: I've been to Hawaii twice and on one of my trips to Hawaii I distinctly remember we're just driving randomly down this road and I see Water Garden Theater and I said to my parents stop the car.
• 11:44
  Crista Cowan: I have to take a picture and text it to Mike.
• 11:47
  Mike Daniels: Yeah.
• 11:48
  Crista Cowan: Because that was a fun connection to make.
• 11:50
  Crista Cowan: I love that you still have a connection to that place.
• 11:54
  Crista Cowan: Talk to me about growing up like not just growing up Hawaiian and what that means to you, but also like what your connection was with your family that was still there, Such a big family Like.
• 12:03
  Crista Cowan: What did that look like?
• 12:04
  Mike Daniels: So all the big holidays were spent together, and that's how the family grew and grew and, like I said, we had maybe 50 people or more when we got together for a family dinner, but like Thanksgiving, for example, somebody would cook the turkey, somebody would cook the ham, and then there were all these other foods from all the different cultures that were brought in by all of the people that had married into the family, and so that was a smorgasbord and just a delight.
• 12:29
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 12:30
  Mike Daniels: All the different flavors.
• 12:31
  Crista Cowan: How many?
• 12:31
  Crista Cowan: Do you know how many first cousins you have?
• 12:33
  Mike Daniels: Just a delight.
• 12:33
  Mike Daniels: Yeah, all the different flavors.
• 12:34
  Mike Daniels: How many?
• 12:34
  Mike Daniels: Do you know how many first cousins you have?
• 12:36
  Mike Daniels: Oh, I don't.
• 12:36
  Mike Daniels: You never counted.
• 12:36
  Mike Daniels: No, I know it's more than 10.
• 12:38
  Mike Daniels: Right.
• 12:41
  Crista Cowan: But you mentioned the different cultures that married in Like.
• 12:45
  Crista Cowan: What did that look like?
• 12:46
  Mike Daniels: So it's a really interesting thing.
• 12:48
  Mike Daniels: Back during the war of course you know United States, japan they were not exactly friendly with one another, and so my mom and dad were.
• 12:58
  Mike Daniels: That was almost a taboo marriage and that was hard on the family and on my mom.
• 13:03
  Mike Daniels: But since the grandparents passed away and the generations moved on all of the rest of the siblings that were older, after someone passed away their spouses, they would remarry and it would either be a Caucasian or someone from a different race.
• 13:18
  Mike Daniels: So it was pretty cool.
• 13:19
  Crista Cowan: That is interesting, yeah, and it's interesting because you think, like Hawaii has had such a huge Japanese population for so long, yeah, and the United States didn't.
• 13:30
  Crista Cowan: You know, hawaii wasn't admitted to the Union until 1959, like long after the war.
• 13:34
  Crista Cowan: And so there's still like, yeah, that cultural tension.
• 13:38
  Mike Daniels: Oh yeah.
• 13:38
  Crista Cowan: Right, and did that exist even still when you were growing up?
• 13:41
  Mike Daniels: It was actually harder when I was growing up.
• 13:43
  Mike Daniels: You could end up in a fistfight for no reason, just you know.
• 13:47
  Mike Daniels: Somebody looked at you the wrong way.
• 13:49
  Mike Daniels: You looked at them and next thing you know you're out on the field duking it out.
• 13:54
  Mike Daniels: That happened to me a couple of times.
• 13:56
  Crista Cowan: Oh, wow, wow.
• 13:57
  Crista Cowan: And that's was the tension, primarily like Japanese and Caucasian or with the new.
• 14:03
  Mike Daniels: Hawaiians yeah, not just Japanese.
• 14:05
  Mike Daniels: All the cultures.
• 14:06
  Mike Daniels: And there was a pecking order to the cultures, you know.
• 14:09
  Mike Daniels: Some were accepted, some weren't.
• 14:10
  Mike Daniels: It depended on how long the generations they'd been there.
• 14:13
  Mike Daniels: So I kind of grew up through that whole phase.
• 14:16
  Mike Daniels: And it was still, even when I was young.
• 14:19
  Mike Daniels: I remember the mother of this girl that I like said date your own kind, you know and I thought oh okay, that's interesting.
• 14:26
  Mike Daniels: So, but that was then, and things have really changed since then.
• 14:32
  Mike Daniels: I've noticed many more interracial couples that have married.
• 14:37
  Crista Cowan: Well, and I suppose that probably affects the cultural shift as well, because now we're family, yeah, and that changes everything Right inside the family.
• 14:45
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, interesting.
• 14:47
  Crista Cowan: That's fascinating to me because I like, I mean I know a little bit about your Jewish background, me because I like I mean I know a little bit about your Jewish background.
• 14:56
  Crista Cowan: I do a lot of Jewish family history research and there's such a closed community among Jews.
• 14:58
  Crista Cowan: Typically right, like Jewish people marry other Jewish people and have for centuries, and because it's such an ethno religion, you end up with this really closed community.
• 15:08
  Crista Cowan: But for your father to step out of that and for your mother to step out of that on the Japanese side, that was really brave of them Brave.
• 15:14
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, and did they stay married?
• 15:17
  Mike Daniels: Yeah, they were married until they both died.
• 15:20
  Crista Cowan: And lived in Hawaii the whole time.
• 15:21
  Mike Daniels: Lived in Hawaii the whole time.
• 15:22
  Crista Cowan: Good for them.
• 15:23
  Crista Cowan: Good for them.
• 15:24
  Crista Cowan: What is like if you could look to their relationship.
• 15:27
  Mike Daniels: What's like one lesson you learned you learned Well again, I learned that you know if you really love the person that you're with and that's where you're grounded, that you can get past pretty much any trial or any disagreement.
• 15:43
  Mike Daniels: Back then it was you know parents go in the back room, close, lock the door and then they go to another room, lock the door and that's where they have their discussion.
• 15:52
  Mike Daniels: No fighting outside of that room.
• 15:54
  Mike Daniels: It was always private.
• 15:57
  Mike Daniels: And then typically they'd open the door and come out and dad would say I have a different opinion now.
• 16:03
  Crista Cowan: Oh good.
• 16:03
  Mike Daniels: Yeah.
• 16:06
  Crista Cowan: If, how would you?
• 16:07
  Crista Cowan: How would you describe their demeanor?
• 16:09
  Mike Daniels: Oh, mom was, she was a very thinking person, she was.
• 16:14
  Mike Daniels: She was always up here and I think she was the.
• 16:16
  Mike Daniels: She was more of the intellectual that you know, kind of read other people and read situations and I learned a lot from her.
• 16:25
  Mike Daniels: You know about how to interact with people, how to just ignore something that's going on right in front of you without judging it, without looking like you're judging it, just let it go.
• 16:34
  Mike Daniels: And Dad, on the other hand, was just like thin your face, you know, I think a lot of that came from his military background, but if he saw a problem he was right there.
• 16:44
  Crista Cowan: So you then?
• 16:45
  Crista Cowan: You went to school in Hawaii for a year or two, didn't you?
• 16:49
  Mike Daniels: Oh, I went to.
• 16:50
  Mike Daniels: Oh, you mean for college?
• 16:51
  Mike Daniels: For college, yeah, yeah, I did two years, okay, BYU-Hawaii.
• 16:54
  Crista Cowan: And then I came up here and did you meet Jane here.
• 17:00
  Mike Daniels: I met Jane there.
• 17:01
  Mike Daniels: Oh, she was on a semester program in 1979.
• 17:04
  Mike Daniels: And we made full use of that semester.
• 17:07
  Crista Cowan: Oh, I love that, yeah.
• 17:07
  Mike Daniels: And then I left on an LDS mission for two years.
• 17:09
  Mike Daniels: Where'd you serve Montreal, canada, french speaking?
• 17:15
  Mike Daniels: That's kind of french-speaking that's a cold cultural yes it is, yes, very much so, but the second largest jewish community outside of israel.
• 17:19
  Mike Daniels: Yeah, so the the story with jane is actually it's a whole romantic thing oh, tell me everything, okay, I don't know.
• 17:25
  Mike Daniels: I've ever heard this.
• 17:26
  Mike Daniels: I I woke up one morning and I decided I'm gonna go to the library and study.
• 17:30
  Mike Daniels: I've never been to the library.
• 17:32
  Mike Daniels: When did I ever go to the library and study?
• 17:34
  Mike Daniels: And you were how old 18 at the time.
• 17:38
  Crista Cowan: Okay, and you're at BYU-Hawaii, byu-hawaii Okay.
• 17:41
  Mike Daniels: And I opened up those library doors and I looked in and all I saw was Jane sitting on the other side of a very large desk and she was studying.
• 17:50
  Mike Daniels: And I literally, literally backed out of the room and just caught my breath.
• 17:54
  Mike Daniels: And then I just went in, sat right across from her, put my hands on my, on my fists, my head on my fists, and and she finally looked up and said can I help you?
• 18:05
  Mike Daniels: It's kind of a little irritated.
• 18:06
  Mike Daniels: And so I said hey, uh, do you know French?
• 18:09
  Mike Daniels: She says I do speak a little French, can?
• 18:12
  Mike Daniels: you tutor me, and then we had our first date at the ceramic studio that Thursday.
• 18:18
  Crista Cowan: I love that.
• 18:18
  Crista Cowan: That's amazing, and was she from there as well?
• 18:21
  Mike Daniels: No, where was she from?
• 18:22
  Mike Daniels: Jane was born in Okinawa, okay, and raised in like New York and Chicago.
• 18:26
  Crista Cowan: Oh, okay, yeah so.
• 18:28
  Mike Daniels: Both half Japanese, both half Caucasian, both military fathers, both Japanese moms, both raised with the culture and everything else.
• 18:39
  Crista Cowan: But you didn't know that when you saw her.
• 18:39
  Mike Daniels: No, I just looked at her and I just I love this girl.
• 18:42
  Mike Daniels: She just looks gorgeous.
• 18:45
  Crista Cowan: And how long did it take you to convince her to love you back?
• 18:48
  Crista Cowan: Four years, okay.
• 18:50
  Mike Daniels: Yeah, we dated before the mission just for that one semester and kept in touch a little bit on the mission and then kind of fell apart, but at the end writing again.
• 18:59
  Mike Daniels: And then when I got home we saw each other once.
• 19:02
  Mike Daniels: That's another romantic story.
• 19:03
  Mike Daniels: It was I'd been home two weeks and she was flying back with her mom from a trip through asia, and so they were in the international lockdown inside the airport and I was on the outside this is when you could go up to the gate without a you know, without a ticket.
• 19:17
  Mike Daniels: so I'm standing on the outside.
• 19:18
  Mike Daniels: This is when you could go up to the gate without a ticket.
• 19:19
  Mike Daniels: So I'm standing on the outside of this thing and she's on the inside.
• 19:21
  Mike Daniels: We both found cardboard and we were writing notes to each other, holding them up to the window, and the people on the other side are, you know, oh, and her mom's, in the background.
• 19:29
  Mike Daniels: And so I bribed the security guard and I said look, I haven't seen this girl in two years.
• 19:34
  Mike Daniels: Can I just like give her a hug?
• 19:35
  Mike Daniels: And so he looked around.
• 19:38
  Mike Daniels: He blew that her out, we gave a big hug, we kissed.
• 19:41
  Mike Daniels: It was a really long kiss for, you know, not having dated too much yeah.
• 19:47
  Crista Cowan: That's amazing.
• 19:48
  Crista Cowan: That is a great story.
• 19:49
  Crista Cowan: I love that.
• 19:49
  Crista Cowan: And so you guys got married.
• 19:52
  Crista Cowan: What year?
• 19:53
  Mike Daniels: 83.
• 19:54
  Crista Cowan: You've been married for a minute.
• 19:55
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, yeah.
• 19:56
  Crista Cowan: Did you ever go back to Hawaii to live?
• 19:58
  Mike Daniels: He's been married for a minute.
• 19:59
  Mike Daniels: Yeah, yeah.
• 20:00
  Mike Daniels: Did you ever go back to Hawaii to?
• 20:01
  Mike Daniels: Live, not to live, but we've been back many times.
• 20:02
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, and I had a sister there and a brother there, their kids and then all the cousins and all the cousins.
• 20:08
  Crista Cowan: And do you all still get together at any regularity?
• 20:11
  Crista Cowan: Is there a reunion plan?
• 20:13
  Mike Daniels: Well, my one aunt that was still alive.
• 20:15
  Mike Daniels: She actually organized a family reunion when my mom was still alive and some of the other aunts and that was nice.
• 20:22
  Crista Cowan: But after that Nobody's taken up that mantle.
• 20:25
  Crista Cowan: No, no, does that I mean?
• 20:28
  Crista Cowan: Is that okay, or?
• 20:31
  Mike Daniels: does it make you kind of sad?
• 20:32
  Mike Daniels: I think we're missing some things because of it, but I wouldn't trade what we have, you know, for what we missed.
• 20:38
  Mike Daniels: Yeah, yeah.
• 20:38
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 20:38
  Crista Cowan: So, as you've raised your kids, you know you and Jane both have these strong Japanese identities, but you also have this connection to Hawaii, and so how do you, you know, how do you, or have you transmitted that to the next generation?
• 20:53
  Mike Daniels: So they've all been to Hawaii at least once if not twice or three times.
• 20:57
  Mike Daniels: And the younger generation a lot of them have been as well, and yeah, we've always been attached.
• 21:03
  Mike Daniels: We go to the Polynesian festival every year.
• 21:06
  Mike Daniels: We have friends that are either from Hawaii or they're, you know, polynesian of some sorts.
• 21:12
  Mike Daniels: We get together with them.
• 21:14
  Mike Daniels: We've incorporated a lot of their foods into our lives.
• 21:18
  Mike Daniels: We did then, we do now.
• 21:19
  Mike Daniels: We make lau lau at home.
• 21:21
  Mike Daniels: We'll employ, we've made that.
• 21:23
  Mike Daniels: When we go back we always buy different kinds of Hawaiian foods and try it.
• 21:27
  Crista Cowan: Tell me you don't eat spam.
• 21:29
  Mike Daniels: I love spam.
• 21:30
  Mike Daniels: You and my dad.
• 21:30
  Mike Daniels: Spam is like oh, and this is an interesting thing.
• 21:34
  Mike Daniels: An interesting thing my son married one of the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of the guy that invented spam.
• 21:43
  Crista Cowan: Stop it, yes.
• 21:46
  Mike Daniels: That's amazing.
• 21:46
  Mike Daniels: Is that amazing?
• 21:47
  Mike Daniels: We thought, yes, we're going to get free spam.
• 21:50
  Crista Cowan: No free spam.
• 21:51
  Mike Daniels: No free spam.
• 21:52
  Crista Cowan: It's so fascinating to me, like Hawaii is such an interesting place I mentioned I've been there twice but looking into the families that I know from there and this like intercultural thing that happens right Like I have friends who aren't indigenous Hawaiian but also have family members who you know, grandmothers who were Japanese and the military made such a total change on the entire face of Hawaiian culture, and so for that to be part of her story as well is just fascinating to me.
• 22:21
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, and your dad's background like we didn't talk a lot about it, but that discovery that we made as we started digging into your.
• 22:28
  Crista Cowan: Your last name is Daniels, but it turns out probably not actually Daniels.
• 22:33
  Mike Daniels: Right, as you discovered for me.
• 22:36
  Crista Cowan: You knew you were Jewish, like you knew your dad was Jewish, but beyond that, like the problem getting beyond, that was the surname.
• 22:44
  Crista Cowan: I couldn't find it.
• 22:45
  Mike Daniels: Yeah, I have no idea.
• 22:46
  Mike Daniels: I mean, there was Daniels and that was it.
• 22:48
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 22:49
  Mike Daniels: And then I lost.
• 22:49
  Mike Daniels: I just couldn't connect it.
• 22:51
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, and it's so interesting because I think in Jewish research one of the things we often discover with immigration, because I think in Jewish research one of the things we often discover with immigration, particularly from those Eastern European countries into the United States, is that assimilation desire.
• 23:05
  Crista Cowan: And so Danielewicz became Daniels, probably in a desire to assimilate from Lithuanian Jewish to Massachusetts.
• 23:13
  Mike Daniels: Got a good memory.
• 23:14
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, well, it was an impactful story, I think, because for all of my experience in Jewish immigration research, that was probably one of the first name change cases I had really come across and now it's so prevalent in all the research that I do.
• 23:33
  Crista Cowan: But I was thinking about that, knowing I was going to talk to you today, and I was thinking about, like that we don't see that with the Japanese culture, right, like this is such a different experience, like we have these Lithuanian Jews coming to the United States and changing their names and trying to assimilate and they're not just changing their last names.
• 23:49
  Crista Cowan: In some cases they're changing, you know, I think.
• 23:52
  Crista Cowan: Let's see if I can remember this Is it Moishe became Morris or Max?
• 23:55
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, morris, is it Moishe?
• 23:56
  Mike Daniels: became Morris or Max.
• 23:56
  Mike Daniels: Yeah, Morris.
• 23:57
  Crista Cowan: Okay, they changed their entire identity in some cases in order to fit in, and Japanese, in coming into Hawaii, tended to maintain their culture and keep that identity, and even to the point of your grandfather not wanting your mom to marry your dad.
• 24:16
  Crista Cowan: So it's just fascinating to me the way different cultures manage to navigate those different spaces when they come into them, and Hawaii is such a microcosm of that.
• 24:28
  Mike Daniels: Yeah, it is.
• 24:31
  Crista Cowan: You know the story of your grandparents' immigration to Hawaii, but have you been able to trace further back into Japan?
• 24:36
  Mike Daniels: So no, because the records, because of the war, the records all got destroyed.
• 24:42
  Mike Daniels: And so really what?
• 24:43
  Mike Daniels: They have are town records up until a certain date.
• 24:46
  Mike Daniels: Like the war, yeah.
• 24:48
  Mike Daniels: But if you go back and visit family homes and whatnot, you'll see photographs of people up on the walls from prior generations.
• 25:00
  Mike Daniels: So some of it got saved.
• 25:01
  Mike Daniels: We were back in Okinawa two years ago for Janeside and that's exactly what we found.
• 25:09
  Mike Daniels: We found these pictures on the walls.
• 25:11
  Mike Daniels: They're kind of like the corner of the wall up there and you look at them and they just they're they're family members of parents, grandparents, great-grandparents from those generations before wow.
• 25:24
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, that's amazing because I think so many of us crave photos and so for that to be the preservation method there is is fascinating, yeah wow, open my eyes as you think about kind of your connection to hawaii and the family you still have there, like what does it, what does it mean to you to be able to say that I'm Hawaiian?
• 25:43
  Mike Daniels: Well, you know, growing up in Hawaii, I can say that I've met a lot of different cultures from all over the world, because it is a melting pot and it's really possible for people to live together in peace.
• 25:55
  Mike Daniels: A place where you can live together in peace, even if it's really possible for people to live together in peace, A place where you can live together in peace even if it's the afterbirth of a war a terrible war, but you can live side by side, you can get to know others, you can maybe appreciate and respect their background and their culture.
• 26:14
  Mike Daniels: You start to adopt the food and, before you know it, customs and things are interchanged.
• 26:18
  Mike Daniels: I think that's really helped me in my career and also in life, being here and, you know, getting to know people in my community getting elected to be the mayor?
• 26:31
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, that's amazing, and I think that's a tribute to Hawaii and the resilience of that place as well.
• 26:38
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, thank you, thank you.
• 26:39
  Mike Daniels: Thank you, it was good to see you.
• 26:42
  Mike Daniels: It was good to see you, Crista.