Posted on: Sunday, September 2, 2001

Our Honolulu
A journey of love and other stuff

By Bob Krauss

There must be a million stories about how people came to Our Honolulu, but Betty Robinson's is in a class by itself.

She's from Melbourne, Australia. However, this is a tale of romance and Jim Robinson, the fellow who caused all the trouble, is a Roosevelt High School graduate. So we'll start at this end.

Robinson graduated in 1935 and sailed to the University of Washington in Seattle to study accounting, while Betty posed as a fashion model at a boutique on trendy Collins Street in Melbourne.

War clouds loomed. After graduation, Robinson enlisted in the U.S. Marines as a second lieutenant.

In Melbourne, a labor shortage swept Betty out of the boutique and into an aircraft factory manufacturing bombers at the edge of the airport. "When a plane came in to land, we all ducked," she said.

Now the plot thickens. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The Marines heroically stormed the beaches at Guadalcanal. Robinson survived without a scratch. The bad news was that Marines who escaped bullets came down with malaria.

"They packed us off to Melbourne," Robinson said, "out of the tropics."

You're saying to yourself, "Betty came to the hospital and nursed him back to health?" The fact is, she was too busy dancing with Robbie's friends at the Australian equivalent of the USO. They all recovered before he did.

As a result, she heard a lot about him, the sickest one of the bunch. "Poor Robbie," they said. "He's suffering." By the time Robinson got to the dance floor, Betty hardly needed an introduction.

It was a whirlwind romance. An ice skating rink in Melbourne provided a popular social activity. Being from Hawai'i, Robinson's ice skating skills weren't too sharp. He had tried ice skating in Seattle, mostly on his back.

He took Betty to the ice skating rink with the same result before he found out she was the Victoria State Ice Skating Champion. They were married in September.

Robinson's commanding officer told him to take a 10-day honeymoon. Three days later he called to say, "Get your ... over here, we're shipping out."

The outfit went to fight in the jungle of New Guinea. On Christmas Day, 1943, they made another assault landing at New Britain. They were retraining when Robinson got word that he was a father. Then he went to Palau and got the side of one leg blown off.

We'll skip to after the surrender, when Robinson was assigned command of Camp Catlin on O'ahu and Betty boarded a war-bride ship in Australia with 2-year-old David on one arm; destination, San Francisco.

The Australian wives wanted to stop in Waikiki. So they turned on the water taps in their cabins and let them run. By the time the ship reached Hawai'i, the captain had to put into the nearest port for water. That's how Betty Robinson came to Our Honolulu.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073 or bkrauss@honoluluadvertiser.com