Posted on: Sunday, December 12, 2004
BOOKMARKS
Norwegian immigrants' stories gathered in book
By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Books Editor
"ALOHA FRA GLEMTE NORDMENN PA HAWAII" by Torbjørn Griepsland; Emigrantforlagat, hardback, $25
The book begins with excerpts from the diary of a Norwegian immigrant who came to the Islands aboard the one and only contract worker ship from Norway, the bark Beta, in 1880. It discusses their place in plantation history — a largely unhappy story — and includes interviews with modern-day Norwegians. Griepsland retells the late O.A. Bushnell's stories about his querulous grandmother, and members of the L'Orange family offer anecdotes about their Norwegian progenitors. Griepsland's friend, Auden Davik, is handling local sales; call 922-0980.
• • • "BUGCHASERS OF EGYPT: People, Politics and Public Health 1946-2002" by Stanley P. Snodgrass; Xlibris, $29.69 hardback or $19.54 paperback
• • • "PACIFIC WAR STORIES: In the Words of Those Who Survived" by Rex Alan Smith and Gerald A. Meehl; Abbeville Press, hardback, $27.50
Torbjørn Griepsland estimates that more than 9,000 kama'aina have Norwegian roots, however tenuous or unexplored. This collection of essays and interviews on the history of Norwegians in Hawai'i is written in Norwegian but sold here with a condensed English translation tucked inside. This labor of love got its start when Griepsland, who was vacationing here, met a Miss Aloha Hula, Malia Peterson, and was intrigued by her Norwegian last name. When she told him that she, like many of Norwegian background here, knew little about her ancestors, Griepsland, a historian and editor from Askim, near Oslo, decided there might be a book in uncovering the Norway-Hawai'i connection.
Despite a rather unpromising cover and more acronyms than a Tom Clancy novel, this book by a Honolulu public health expert and former Navy man has some zip to it. Snodgrass begins with a life-changing experience in January, 1946, when he was suddenly called to join a Navy medical research unit that was researching, and desperately trying to stop, a cholera epidemic in Cairo. Thus began the corpsman's fascination with the U.S. Navy Medical Research Units — laboratories staffed by Navy doctors and corpsmen who study and attempt to prevent infectious diseases around the globe. This is both a memoir and a history of key medical discoveries in the last half of the 20th century. This is a print-on-demand book available from Xlibris.com.
This hefty book is a series of spoken essays, transcribed interviews with survivors of World War II in the Pacific, including three who live here in Hawai'i. The men and women, and sometimes their spouses, tell their stories from enlistment to demobilization in the hearty, matter-of-fact way that's characteristic of veterans from that era, beginning with Pearl Harbor and continuing through the major battles and theaters, through to surrender. Although they're "war stories," many are not battle stories; these accounts paint a very complete picture of military life during that era. The book grew out of the authors' previous book, "Pacific Legacy." (See Lit Beat for signings this week.)
