'Ewa — Bryan Yamashita has no anger for the man arrested on suspicion of murdering his wife, who was tiny enough to wear schoolgirl clothes but had a heart big enough to energize the campus of Wai'anae High School to care about reading.

"I don't want people getting angry at the guy," Yamashita said yesterday. "I want to forgive him. Anger's not going to help anything. It's not going to bring her back. She was my soul mate. She was my best friend."

His wife of 16 years, Asa Yamashita, 43, was sitting on a concrete bench eating saimin at Ewa Town Center around 1:30 p.m. Friday when she was repeatedly stabbed in the upper torso. She died later at Hawaii Medical Center West, Honolulu police said.

Officers arrested Tittleman Fauatea, 25, not long after the attack. Fauatea, who used to live a few blocks from the shopping center, was being held last night on suspicion of second-degree murder.

Yamashita's best friends at Wai'anae High School did not recognize Fauatea's name from the school and police did not know whether she knew Fauatea.

But none of that mattered yesterday to Bryan Yamashita, who teaches social studies at Nanakuli High School.

He now plans to take several weeks off to care for their two daughters, Katie, 7, and Tori, 4, whom the couple adopted in China.

"She was a great mom and a good wife and now she's gone," Yamashita said. "I'm just trying to accept it and help my girls through it. That's the hardest part."

School was in session at Wai'anae High on Friday, but Asa Yamashita took the day off to get her hair cut and buy Girls Day gifts. It was a rare break for the former classroom teacher who, for the past six years, had been the "literacy coach" at Wai'anae High.

Even though she stood only 4 feet 9 inches tall and wore girl-sized shoes and clothing, Yamashita loved beer and could drink grown men under the table, three of her closest friends at Wai'anae High said yesterday.

At school, Yamashita earned the respect of her colleagues and won over burly students who far outweighed her and towered over her, said Kat Muranaka, who works in the school's office; Janice Uemori, Wai'anae's activities coordinator; and English teacher Wendy Fujitani.

"She was so tiny but had a big presence," Fujitani said.

Muranaka added, "On gusty days, we used to tell her, 'You better hold onto something or you'll blow away.' She was really tiny, with a giant heart."

Yamashita had a quiet, soft voice and never screamed or yelled.

But she motivated students to read for the sheer enjoyment of it and kept control of her classrooms by sincerely listening, her friends said.

"The students just responded," Muranaka said. "She made them feel important because they knew that she genuinely cared."

Soon, both students and faculty could be seen around the Wai'anae campus carrying everything from comic books and surfing magazines to modern works of literature.

Her official title was "reading strategies coach," Uemori said, "but the kids knew her as 'The Book Lady.' She would find out what they were interested in and then hunt down books for them to read."

The material came from a separate library at school that Yamashita stocked, sometimes using her own money to buy the "Twilight" vampire/teen romance novels, the Harry Potter series, the Guinness World Records books — or whatever material flipped on the reading switch for students, including comic books.

"Now you see students all over carrying around novels," Uemori said. "That never happened before."

'GLUE IN THEIR FAMILY'

Yamashita grew up in Kalihi Valley, the youngest of four sisters, said her father, Takeo "Joe" Shimabukuro, 84.

The same year she graduated from Farrington High School, in 1983, Yamashita was a finalist in the Junior Miss Scholarship Pageant and won the title of Miss Congeniality, her friend and fellow pageant contestant Noelani Jai wrote in an e-mail yesterday from Huntington Beach, Calif.

The title of Miss Congeniality "doesn't even begin to describe how sweet and kind to EVERYONE Asa was in her life," Jai wrote.

They both went on to study at Cal Poly Pomona in California, and in the class yearbook Yamashita wrote next to her photo, "Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies. 1 Corinthians 8:1 I love you, Mommy and Daddy."

Yamashita then studied at Harvard and Oxford universities, Bryan Yamashita said.

Her decision to come back home and "teach in a high school that most teachers would consider an undesirable assignment made total sense to those of us who knew her," Jai wrote.

Standing in front of a classroom talking about English or literature "was the job she was born to do," Muranaka said. "She didn't want to leave the classroom."

But taking over the new job of reading strategies coach meant Yamashita could extend her reach to all grade levels and even got teachers talking about — and swapping — books among themselves.

"She missed being in the classroom," Uemori said. "But she was really getting that she was having a big impact."

Yamashita loved to travel until her daughters became her full-time passion, her friends said.

At their home, the girls' toys yesterday took up much of the living room space, which included a homemade bookshelf stuffed with children's books.

"The girls were her priority," Muranaka said. "She was the glue in their family."

PAYING RESPECTS

Several blocks away, a relative who answered the door at Fauatea's last address in 'Ewa would not give his name but said Fauatea had stayed for about a month until he was asked to leave.

Fauatea frequently acted strangely and the relative said he never left the youngest children in the home alone with Fauatea.

Over at Ewa Town Center, friends and strangers left flowers on the concrete bench where Yamashita was stabbed.

Pilialoha Kekona, 28, did not know Yamashita but felt the overwhelming urge to bring a bouquet of flowers yesterday from her home in Makakilo.

"I just had to come to pay my respects," Kekona said.

One of Yamashita's longtime friends from Farrington, Charlene Flanter, hugged her husband and complete strangers yesterday as she watched people drop off flowers at the site, which was still spotted with bloodstains.

"I was so glad to see all of these people have come," Flanter said. "She lived her life selflessly and gave herself totally to everyone around her."