I don't remember very much about my pre-Hilo days, except for a misty recollection somehow of playing in snow. This could be something fabricated in my mind rather than a real memory, for I do have photographs of myself all bundled up and standing in a winter wonderland (most likely Chicago) with a small snow shovel in my hand. Maybe I just saw the photos and thought I still remembered.
There's also a rather dim and hazy picture of another kid urinating on my foot in front of my grandparents' home in Sacramento, but given my age of about two years old, I don't think it's that important to the development of my psyche.
I was born in Joliet, Illinois on October 14, 1944 at St. Joseph's Hospital. Mom once showed me a picture of her in bed with mountains of presents surrounding her. Actually, I'm kind of lucky. Mom kept a baby book full of pictures of me when I was a little tyke: Christmas pictures, birthday party pictures, travelling pictures, pictures of every kind. Later in life, I did the same thing with my first son, Jim.
"Take plenty of pictures," Dad told me when Jim was born. Guess he told Mom and her family the same thing because there are tons of pictures of me.
(It must be part of human nature to take mounds of pictures of your first kid. I noticed we didn't have as many pictures of my sisters and brother, and that the quantity of photos dwindled as the younger kids were born. Same thing happened with my first son. We've got tons of pictures of Jim, but not a hell of a lot of Carleton.)
Dad wasn't in Illinois when I was born. He was at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Guess it's obvious he was in the Army -- a captain in the medical corps, actually. But he did send a telegram which I still have safely ensconced in my baby book. "Managed to get cigars. Anxious like hell to see you and baby. Just missed Friday thirteenth, didn't you? Love, Bob."
Just missed Friday the thirteenth. I told you I was lucky. Guess that's why I've always enjoyed a life of relative good fortune. Born on Saturday the fourteenth. That's the first lucky thing that happened to me. I'll tell you about another in just a little bit.
For now, that's about all I can tell you about the little kid born in Joliet, Illinois on General Dwight D. Eisenhower's birthday. Totally oblivious to the world events taking place, and to the whatever joy was going on all around me, I don't remember a thing at all about it.
That other lucky event I told you about? It happened sometime in mid-summer 1947. Dad, Mom and I moved to Hilo, the county seat of the Big Island of Hawaii, and as we all used to brag, the fifth-largest city in the good ol' U.S. of A. (area-wise).
Dad had separated from the medical corps. He once told me he had been offered a promotion to major and a $300 bonus if he stayed on. Nope. He'd rather come home and open his medical practice now that he had a cute little boy and Mom to support.
Dad was Dr. Robert Mitsuo Miyamoto, Hilo boy. Mom was Dorothy Toyoko (Okumura) Miyamoto, Sacramento girl. Dad was a graduate of the Tulane University School of Medicine, Mom had studied to be a secretary at Business College. Dad served in the U.S. Army at the height of action in Europe. Mom and her family were stuck in a relocation camp at Tule Lake.
I know we moved to Hilo during the summer of 1947 because I have pictures that show me in Illinois in January; Sacramento, California in June (we apparently stopped over to visit with Mom's family); and in Kailua (Kona) in August. Logic dictates that we were "back home" in 1947.
Dad must have been happy. Mom, on the other hand, has told me that when she stepped off the plane and took her first look at Hilo, she thought it was the end of the world. Mom did not care for Hilo in 1947.
That's who I was, who we all were, in the summer of '47.
I was two going on three, and the next fifteen years as a resident of "Hilo, my hometown" would form the nucleus of some of the best years of my life. Hilo has changed a lot since I left for college in 1962, but I will always remember its special charm. I will never forget how the city nurtured and helped me. I will never forget the people with whom I grew up.
Someone once told me that if I were to return to my childhood hometown, it wouldn't be the memories I'd be looking for. It would be my own youth. I've been back many times since 1962, I've noticed the changes that have taken place there.
And as the years pass, I find that the wise person was right. Hilo will change, and there's nothing we can do to bring back the old city that I and my family loved. That past exists only in our memories.
We are not seeking memories; we already have them. Hopefully we'll never forget them. Hopefully we'll all take a positive action and preserve them for our children and the future generations.
It is for them that I put these memories on paper. To them, I bequeath my former youth. Use it wisely.