By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

The Japanese Cultural Center's research department has opened a file on reincarnation but there's not much in it.

Herbert Murayama, a volunteer at the center's library, so far hasn't been able to find a great deal of information about the person who was supposed to be reincarnated.

This research project, perhaps the first of its kind at a library in Hawai'i, began with a phone call. A local travel agent said she was contacted by the grieving parents of a teenage boy from Japan who drowned while on vacation in Hawai'i.

The parents went to a psychic to communicate with their son in the other world. This psychic told them the boy had been the reincarnation of John Morimoto, who died in World War II in a Hawai'i detention camp. The parents then called the travel agent in Hawai'i to help find out about this gentleman.

Murayama volunteered to see what he could do.

This is an example of what lengths the librarians at the Japanese Culture Center, all volunteers, will go to satisfy your thirst for knowledge.

Head volunteer Jane Kurahara, a retired public school librarian, said people are thirsty for information about World War II Japanese detention camps in Hawai'i.

The detention camp on Sand Island is well known. But there were other temporary holding camps on all of the major islands that hardly anybody remembers. Like Honouliuli Detention Camp right here on O'ahu, on Ho-nouliuli Gulch not far from Schofield Barracks.

A request came in from a movie company that wanted to film there. But where was it?

Kurahara and her volunteers, armed with a map and an old picture, drove out to Honouliuli Gulch. A farmer leasing the land, Larry Jeffs, recognized an aqueduct trellis in the old picture.

"But we weren't sure exactly where the camp was because we had the map upside down," Kurahara explained.

They turned the map right side up, and everything fell into place.

Kurahara said the biggest thirst for knowledge has to do with ancestors. Half a dozen volunteer translators keep busy helping people read municipal family registers in Japan to see where their ancestors came from. And they don't charge.

Shige Yoshitake, retired from the state labor department, and Tatsumi Hayashi, who worked for Japan Airlines, are among the busiest volunteers.

While Hayashi was conducting a workshop in genealogy, a young man of Chinese-Japanese descent asked him to help find his mother's ancestors. Hayashi ended up taking him to Kumamoto in Kyushu, where they found the family home on a hillside overgrown with a mandarin orange grove.

"The stone wall surrounding the house was still there," said Hayashi. "It was exciting."

They are putting on another genealogy workshop May 15 to explain how you can locate your ancestors in Japan.

Call 945-7633 and ask for the research center. It's open Wednesdays through Fridays.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073.