It is not unkind to say that Helen Kusunoki lived an ordinary life. Born in 1918 and raised in Waikíkí, Kusunoki grew up in a simple time. She helped at her father's Hawaiian food restaurant, Unique Lunch Room on Kaläkaua Avenue, and swam on Sundays at the Natatorium. She married soon after World War II began, raised two children, and lived for 34 years in a home she and her husband bought on Päkí Avenue. Kusunoki died in 1999.

"I think it was one of the best parts of my life, in Waikíkí," she once said. "I mean the people, the place. Oh, Ihave many, many fond memories."

Ordinary lives such as Kusunoki's are the fabric of community — the vast, unwritten history of the world. The stories are everywhere and invisible at the same time. They are the heart and soul of the University of Hawaii's Center for Oral History, which boasts a catalog of more than 800 interviews.

To find them has been a 30-year quest for Warren Nishimoto, Michi Kodama-Nishimoto and Cynthia Oshiro.

They have chosen 30 interviews for a new book that celebrates the work of the center, which seeks to preserve Hawaii's social and cultural history.

"Talking Hawaii's Story: Oral Histories of an Island People" (University of Hawai'i Press, $19) features men and women who lived through key events in Hawaii's history — immigration, labor strikes, the Great Depression, World War II, statehood, the rise of tourism and the development of a multicultural society.

Their voices are what Nishimoto, the center's director, called "the human dimension."

"Once you start to bring the human dimension into history, where you are dealing with personalities and memories and telling a story, you start to look at history from a much broader perspective," he said. "You are not at the mercy of what was written and left behind."

Traditional history has long been associated with the elite of society, from people who were able to leave a record of their lives — letters, diaries and documents, Nishimoto said

But that presented a problem in Hawaii, where oral traditions dominate the social landscape. When a story was passed from one generation to the next, it wasn't always accurate.

The solution was to create the oral history center, which the state Legislature first funded in 1976, Nishimoto said. It mirrored a nationwide trend at the time, as people went out into society with tape recorders and a list of questions for their neighbors.

The 60-year-old Nishimoto, who was born and raised in Pauoa Valley, brought a formal history background when he was first hired in 1979. He was intrigued by the idea of personal stories, which he found in his interviews with fishermen, farmers, plantation workers, store owners and others.

"The philosophy is that everyone has a story to tell, regardless of why you are interviewing them," he said. "If you talk to people and ask them questions about their life experiences, you are going to learn a heck of a lot."

'WHY ME?'

The process, which includes several hours of face-to-face interviews, created friendships with the people Nishimoto met. In some ways, he knew them better than their children who, for example, would have never asked a parent about a first love.

The interviewees always wondered the same thing: Why me? Eventually, they realized that what they were leaving was a permanent record for their descendants.

"They don't look at themselves as actors on the historical stage," Nishimoto said. "They see themselves as peripherals."

Agnes Chun thought of herself that way when she sat down for her first interview in 1992. Surprised to see a tape recorder, Chun rambled on nervously. When she saw the transcript of her interview with Michi Kodama-Nishimoto, she was embarrassed.

Chun grew up in Pälama, and worked for the federal government for 38 years. At one point, she was comptroller of the 3rd Fleet in the Pacific. Now 84, she lives in Nuuanu.

"I think many people don't realize that unless you have it recorded, it is going to be lost," she said. "And many of us, after our parents are gone, realize: 'I wish I had asked them things.' You get questions from people and you say 'I don't know.' And by that point, it's too late."

The interview process can have a validating effect on people who don't feel worthy of attention, said Kodama-Nishimoto.

PRECIOUS SURPRISE

That was the case a few weeks ago when she met with an 84-year-old Kaimukí woman who called the next day to thank her.

"She said, 'You made me feel important, and I haven't felt important for a long, long time,' " Kodama-Nishimoto said. "After doing this for 30 years, sometimes you feel jaded. Then you get a call like this."

To celebrate the anthology, the center is hosting a free public reading today at the UH School of Architecture. Local actors will read from selected oral histories. Eight of the 30 people interviewed are still alive and several are expected to attend, along with many family members.

Eric Kusunoki will be there, but the book has already given him something precious and unexpected.

The 60-year-old Punahou teacher read his mother's story when he got the book a few weeks ago. The things she told Kodama-Nishimoto in 1986 were familiar to him, things he had heard as a boy but had filed away in a distant recess of memory. The history of his family.

"I could almost picture her telling us the stories," he said. "I could see her face again and hear her voice again. It was like she came alive."

Then as he read the rest of the book, he recognized people and places he knew from his own life. In a way, their story was his story.

"That's what we are," Kusunoki said. "Weave everything together and that is who we are. The sum of all our parts."