By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

Nearly 50 years later, the story still cracks him up.

It was 1954, and George Miyachi had just been made a second lieutenant. As part of his commission, he was sent to a four-month officer training program at the infantry school in Fort Benning, Ga.

So there he was, one of three guys from Hawai'i among about a hundred officers going through the course, sitting on bleachers in a clearing in the middle of what he remembers as a "forest" deep in the American South, listening to an instructor and watching field demonstrations.

And then, it happened. Worlds collided.

The instructor looked at the class of officers and said, "Okay, that's pau for now."

Miyachi said it was like he and the other two men from Hawai'i were on autopilot.

"To us, it was so natural that we just stood up. Automatically without thinking, we got up and left and the rest of the guys, over a hundred guys, just sat there!"

It took a moment for the Hawai'i guys to realize what had just happened. It took a moment for the instructor to realize what he had said.

"The instructor was kinda' puzzled why they weren't moving," Miyachi remembers. "And finally he said, 'Oh, uh, I meant to say we're finished and you are dismissed."

Hearing the word "pau" in the middle of a clearing in officer training school in Georgia was just too amazing. Miyachi had to investigate.

"So I went over to him and he told me it always happened because he had been stationed in Hawai'i for a long period of time and he just used that word so often that it doesn't leave him."

Miyachi, who is a retired Federal Aviation Administration public information officer, sums it up this way:

"That's one word that just doesn't leave you. Even there in Georgia."

The thing is, pau is just the best word for pau.

There are a number of words we use in Hawai'i that just seem to be the best word for a thing. Like maka piapia. How in the world do you say that in English? "Sleep" seems too vague and euphemistic. Telling somebody, "You have 'sleep' in your eyes" doesn't really inspire someone to stick a finger in the corner of their eye and give a good wipe. Calling it "mucous" or "viscous fluid" is way too clinical. "Maka piapia" is just what it is.

Add to that list "ahana koko lele." Elbert and Pukui's dictionary says it's a meaningless phrase, but every kid in Hawai'i knows exactly what it means. There just isn't a better way to say it in standard English; not "shame on you," not "Uh-oh," not "you're in trouble now!" Ahana koko lele just has that extra bite of fear and condemnation.

It happens. Worlds collide, and words like pau and maka piapia and ahana kokolele are spoken in places far away from our islands. And when it happens, that connection, that moment of recognition between people who know and love this place, is pure delight.