Posted on: Friday, January 17, 2003
Letters continue to touch lives
• Previous column: Vietnam vet's search for letter writers turns up a surprise
By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist
Pamela Shingaki's phone started ringing at 5 o'clock Sunday morning. Since then, she's gotten calls from friends, cousins, classmates, people she hasn't heard from in years.
"And my insurance man, he called four times," she says. "He was all excited."
The story about the letters Pamela and two other students at Pearl City Highlands Elementary wrote in 1965 appeared in last Sunday's Advertiser. The letters were addressed to "Dear Mr. Marine" and sent to Vietnam. Terry Feavel of Wisconsin received the letters while serving on the front line in Vietnam during Christmas of 1965. After all this time, Feavel decided he wanted to find the three and express his gratitude for their kind words.
Turns out Wendy Miyama's parents live at the same address written at the top of her letter, so she wasn't too hard to find. Wendy knew how to find Lynne Matsuo, now Lynne Chang, who works here at The Advertiser. But neither knew how to find Pamela. However, lots of other people did.
Pamela works at the Maui Agricultural Research Center. In her letter written 37 years ago, she mentioned "I am now working on a booklet about leaves." She's not sure there's a connection there, but she thinks it's pretty funny.
Like Lynne, Pamela doesn't remember writing the letter to be sent overseas, but she remembers fondly the teacher who gave the assignment, Mrs. Yoshishige. Trouble is, neither remembered her first name. To them she was just "Mrs."
"I remember her being the kind of teacher who would talk to the kids, not so much like a teacher to a student, but she would just talk to you ... kind of like an equal. She didn't talk down to you like you're little children. I remember the way she explained things, she did it so that you were interested. It wasn't like a lecture. She was one of my best teachers," says Pamela.
When Mrs. Yoshishige read her Sunday paper, the first thing she noticed was the picture of Lynne's fourth-grade letter.
"The handwriting caught my eye. I thought, 'What beautiful handwriting.' And when I read it, it mentioned the name of our school. And then I kept on reading, and wow, at the bottom, I saw my name. I was so surprised."
Hiroko Yoshishige retired in 1990 after teaching for 30 years at Pearl City Highlands. She now spends time with her three grandchildren, particularly her 6-year-old grandson, whose mother passed away less than a year ago. She helps the kids with their homework every day. "I'm still teaching," she says.
Mrs. Yoshishige has always believed in the power of a hand-written letter, though this is the first time she's ever gotten feedback from one of the servicemen who received her students' letters.
"I hope that teachers and students in classrooms would look into writing letters like this," she said. "I know the curriculum is packed, and they don't have time to do this sort of thing, but I think it's very worthwhile, even more so today. A letter can really touch someone."
