Hawai'i links to Italy found in middle of sea
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| Royal Hawaiian Band dancer Karena Kauahi welcomes the Amerigo Vespucci to Hawai'i. The ship sailed into Honolulu last week; it leaves this week, bound for Tahiti and New Zealand.
Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser |
By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer
Among the thousands of Italian World War II prisoners held in Hawai'i, four never returned home and are buried in Schofield Barracks' cemetery.
On Friday, a bit of Italy went to them.
About 25 cadets, several officers and 15 crew members of the Naval Academy training tall ship Amerigo Vespucci, visited Schofield and laid a wreath on the graves.
The tall ship, which is named for the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512), for whom the North and South American continents are named, is on its first Pacific crossing and will be in port until tomorrow.
Between 1944 and 1946, 5,000 Italian prisoners of war were held at Schofield, in Kane'ohe, Kalihi Valley and on Sand Island.
Why the POWs were sent to Hawai'i remains something of a mystery.
Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser
They were captured by the British in North Africa in 1943, and at least one account had them arriving after passing through Fort Lawton in Seattle.
Marinaio Sergio Cadalano of the Italian tall ship Amerigo Vespucci examines "The Hula Dancer," created by Alfredo Giusti, an Italian POW who was interned on Sand Island during World War II. The statue is outside the Coast Guard's Florence Ebersole Smith administration building on Sand Island.
But evidence of their internment here remains in a more concrete form: statuary designed by Italian POWs that is still on display at Fort Shafter and at the Coast Guard station on Sand Island.
The former Sand Island Detention Center held war captives as well as civilians of Japanese, German or Italian ancestry who were under investigation.
The Italian POWs also were responsible for a statue at the Immigration Center at Ala Moana, and Mother Cabrini Chapel at Schofield, which was later torn down.
At Fort Shafter, POW Alfredo Giusti's handiwork included a fountain bearing Venice's emblem — winged lions, and another crowned by pineapples.
Outside the Coast Guard's Florence Ebersole Smith administration building at Sand Island are two other Giusti creations: "The Hula Dancer," and "The Bathing Beauty," both from 1944.
For officers and young cadets of the 71-year-old Amerigo Vespucci — the oldest vessel in the Italian Navy — the trip to see the graves and statues of countrymen was a reminder of less happy times amid the surf and sun of Hawai'i.
The group also visited the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl.
According to "Italian Prisoners of War in America, 1942-1946," by Louis E. Keefer, 50,000 Italians captured in North Africa were shipped to the United States as POWs.
After Italy's surrender, 35,000 POWs worked with the U.S. Army as cooperators, but 15,000 "non-cooperators" remained in stockades until their release in 1945 and 1946.
"I feel a little bit sad because if you die not in your country, without your parents and the people you love, probably it's not a very good thing," said cadet Marco Epifanio, 21, of the four graves at Schofield.
"Places like this, it's kind of linking to (Italian) naval history and what happened in the past," said Lt. j.g. Sebastian Rossitto, 26, a staff officer. "So of course it's very important for us."
At the Coast Guard station, that link is a little more whimsical in nature.
Giusti, who was interned on Sand Island, designed the bare-breasted, grass-skirted "Hula Dancer" in the image of an early Hawaiian maiden.
"The Bathing Beauty," meanwhile, was fashioned by Giusti in the likeness of his Italian girlfriend.
Both bear the inscription, "Dedicated to give hope to those without hope" — a reference to Hansen's disease sufferers. The Coast Guard has adapted those words to its mission of giving hope to those lost at sea.
The statues during World War II were in a garden at the "quarantine" center on Sand Island.
Both became the property of the Coast Guard when it bought the land in 1946.
Wearing flesh-toned paint and lipstick in the early 1990s, the statues were renovated in 1995 — sans makeup — by a team that included base personnel, a local Boy Scout Troop, and experts from the University of Hawai'i.
Giusti died in the late 1980s or early 1990s, but in 1993, eight former Italian POWs returned to see the four graves and statues and recalled the Mother Cabrini Chapel at Schofield, which was built by 2,000 prisoners.
Mario Benelli, who was 73 at the time of the visit, said that prisoners were not treated or fed very well on the Mainland.
But in detention on O'ahu, "the relationship between our captors and us was very friendly and we were treated very well even though barbed wire surrounded us," he said at the time.
Gianni Pizzigoni, another Italian POW, said, "We were taken outside of camp and told to clean grass or do kitchen work."
The Romanesque-style Mother Cabrini Chapel, torn down in 1950, was across Kamehameha Highway from Wheeler Army Airfield.
Naval Academy cadet Carla Pellegrino, 19, said the statues at the Coast Guard station "are a piece of Italian art. I think they are very beautiful."
But perhaps more Hawaiian than Italian in design.
"This (hula) dancer — in Italy, there aren't these types of statues," she said.
Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-5459.
