Looking for
General Shinseki’s old residence/Carlos Pueblo
We ride on a
tip shuttle provided by a Hawaiian store Hilo Hattie to the
downtown Lihu’I
where is General Shinseki’s home town. He was a
former secretary
of veteran affairs and a former army chief of staff. I
have admired
him ever since read about him and his courage and loyalty
to this
nation. He was from Lihu’I as the third generation of Japanese
immigrant,
sansei, a graduate of West Point, during his adolescent years,
he served as
a volunteer firefighter and directed traffic at the down streets.
I wanted to
visit the good fongsuei of his parents residence where a great man
coming from;
therefore, I kept asking about him and his parents until I met
a senior lady
volunteer at a state office. She appreciated my effort and was
anxious to
help me to locate his sister Yvonne Shinseki and brother Paul Shinseki.
She says
that he, the general, is no longer living at here; however, when he comes
back to
Hawaii, he would stay with his brother. Paul’s wife Carol usually drives
her
sister-in-law for shopping daily. She knows Yvonne well so we called Yvonne
and Paul
with my phone of Houston area code, of course no body answered. She
then walked
us to another office to see a young offer who said the state could not
release any
of the personal information.
I followed
the senior lady’s point of direction toward Paul’s residence. The residential
area is well
kept about 1/3 acre lot some of them converted to business use such as
physician’s
office or general proprietor’s practice. We passed by a helicopter’s office
where I was
not quite sure was the same one we took our daughter to for her helicopter
ride in
2008. We walked back to Hilo Hattie store for the same shuttle to go back to
the
ship. I still
remember that same MacDonald and movie theatre on the old town main
street where
Shinseki directed the traffic.
We still had
some time and I went across the street from the store to chat with a rental
car manager
on the strip to find out how to manage a rental car in the next cruise travel,
then I went
to a gift shop on the first corner of the strip and chatted with a clerk. She
pointed out
a plastic portea flower among a group of Hawaiian gingers where I could see
some
similarity. She is very learned person good at international politic especially
in the
middle east
such as Egypt, she might be an Egyptian or Asian Indian that I could not tell.
The ship
left Nawiliwili Bay at 2:30 pm and toward the north coast. I think that the
Captain
makes a
special tour for us to view the Na Pali Coast for the huge wave to hit the
steep
cliff, this
is why no road beyond the wet/dry caves and Kalalau Valley. I saw two unique
drawing of a
Filipino artist at Marriott the day before. There is a famous description of an
old Chinese
poem about such scenery for the wave to hit the cliff in a result of thousands
of piled up
snow.
