By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

There's no mistaking the Kamehameha Schools look. The image has gotten slightly blurred since ROTC uniforms were packed in mothballs. But the Kamehameha student is still the epitome of squeaky clean.

Don't misunderstand me. It's refreshing to see a teenager with his hair cut.

The whole campus has a tidy, after-spring-cleaning, ready-for-a-visit-by-the-in-laws propriety that other high schools should envy.

It hit me all over again when I went up to talk to "Pop" Diamond in the bowels of the library.

There's something else about Kamehameha. It's like Our Honolulu used to be when everybody knew everybody else. Pop Diamond is hidden away close to the top of the hill, a needle in a haystack. I had to ask directions four times.

I've visited high school campuses where students give you the stink eye. Those Kamehameha kids turned themselves into tour directors to help me. As if I was a long-lost uncle from Moloka'i. Some girls sitting like a row of happy myna birds on a wall waved when I walked by.

The reason I brought this up is that Pop is a master at catching the Kamehameha Schools look. It's what his book, a photo essay called "Images of Aloha," is about.

He explained, "Hamilton McCubbin (Kamehameha chief executive officer) wanted the book to be about the 1950s and the 1960s. So that's what it is."

For Pop Diamond, the assignment was a natural. He started shooting pictures at Kamehameha 50 years ago with a speed graphic and a pocketful of flashbulbs. He's got the Kamehameha look down to perfection.

Turn to Page 55, the years 1953-54. That's the year Pop shot Anthony Sang and Henry Kainoa in agriculture class. The boys in spotless jeans are sitting in the dirt. They are eating neatly sliced watermelons but neither of them has a drop of juice on his chin. Only Kamehameha students can pull that off.

The boys are smiling, of course. At Kamehameha, smiling is second nature. Pop shot Kamehameha students smiling while petting turkeys, while carving tikis in woodworking class, while holding squid on a fish spear, while candling eggs in vocational education.

Students on other campuses should do more of that. Of course, Kamehameha students don't smile all the time. It's hard to smile while you're blowing a conch shell or dissecting a slimy snake in biology class.

In a way, Pop Diamond has produced a new art form, an overgrown school annual that captures something intangible. Like a shot of the welding class, every welder in shined shoes. The hardcover book is on sale now, listed at $59.95 and worth every penny.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-0873.