East O'ahu resident, 93, considers herself lucky survivor
| • | Tsunamis in Hawai'i: Eyewitnesses remember |
| • | Tsunami awareness is the best protection |
| • | Major tsunamis recorded in Hawai'i |
By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Staff Writer
Most people know the 1946 tsunami devastated Hilo. Ninety-three-year-old Helen Sanborn Davis knows it did far more than that.
Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser
Davis was a young mother leading an idyllic beachside life at Wawamalu in East O'ahu when the tsunami struck. She lost everything she owned, but considers herself lucky. She escaped with her life and family; the tsunami took 159 lives, including 13 on Maui, 17 on Kaua'i and six on O'ahu.
Helen Davis returns to where her home once stood. The 1946 tsunami took it all away, but she managed to flee to higher ground at Makapu'u.
"Grab the baby and run!" is what Davis remembers her husband, Alan, yelling that April Fools' Day 55 years ago. "Tidal wave! Tidal wave!"
It was 6:30 a.m. The first of the nine waves spawned by an Aleutian earthquake had already swept ashore, sending water lapping at the Davis home, which sat 30 feet back from the ocean.
A caretaker thought the cesspool had overflowed, but Helen Davis knew this was the real thing. She ordered the caretaker to gather his family, and grabbed her own 8-month-old daughter, Linda, a bottle and a lunch pail, jumped into the car and headed for the higher ground above Makapu'u. Alan Davis and their 13-year-old daughter, Nancy, followed in another car a few minutes later.
Up to that moment, home was a splendid isolation at Wawamalu. Davis, a downtown businessman, leased 2,000 acres for cattle ranching beyond what's now known as Hawai'i Kai. Visitors had to pass through four locked gates to reach the home, which included a saltwater swimming pool, tennis court and a large ranch-style house designed by architect Ray Morris. Their only full-time neighbors on the rugged coastline were Walter and Bennie Wix, and some Hawaiian cowboys working on the ranch.
"It was a wonderful life, full of family, visiting friends and cattle ranching," Helen Davis recalls.
All that came to an end in a less than one hour.
Many people on O'ahu thought the stories of a statewide tsunami were an April Fools' Day joke by radio personality J. Akuhead Pupule, famed for his pranks. From her safe vantage point above Makapu'u, Davis could see how real it was, watching as each succeeding wave, about 15 minutes apart, pushed a new wall of water through her home, gradually eroding the walls and foundation until nothing was left.
"Most people don't realize that the damage wasn't done by one big wave," said Donna Saiki, director of the Pacific Tsunami Museum in Hilo. "The first wave was a more like a super high tide that came up and around the buildings. It was the the third and fourth waves that were the highest. The others just kept pushing water into the shore, causing more damage."
When the roaring waves finally stopped, there was nothing to do but start life all over again.
Two days after the tsunami, Davis left the friends' home she was staying at and drove the family car back to Wawamalu. She parked near the road and walked through the scattered debris. Two green parrots, Dy and Grandma, were nowhere to be found; the family dogs were being treated at a veterinarian's office in town the day of the tsunami and were not hurt.
One of the local farmers handed Davis a gold chain and locket that belonged to her daughter, who had died a few years earlier. A family wall safe with some photos and mementos was found beneath a pile of debris.
"The thing I remember most is finding our refrigerator all smashed up against a wall," Davis said. "But inside there was a box of eggs, and none of those were broken at all."
Others around the state were not so lucky.
"Most people think of the tsunami as a Hilo experience," Saiki said. "That's a very, very common idea. But people need to know that it was territorial-wide disaster."
On O'ahu, museum records show, three people were killed at Kahana, two died at Kahuku and one died at Makapu'u, although Davis said she can't remember hearing about a death there.
The Davises moved to Makiki, then Waipi'o, and today Helen Davis lives an active life alone in a home in the lee of Diamond Head. Homes were never built again along the beachfront at Wawamalu, between Sandy Beach and Makapu'u, and the area today is state preservation land.
Many surfers, longtime residents and some map books refer to the area as Alan Davis Beach, but few of those who wander the shoreline know the story of the tsunami that hit it 55 years ago today.
