As a child she survived Pearl Harbor. Now she shares its valuable lessons

By Jill Draper

This date will live in infamy, declared then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt when the Japanese military attacked a U.S. naval base in Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

It’s also a date survived and memorialized by Dorinda Makanaonalani Nicholson, a Raytown resident who witnessed the bombing and hid in a sugarcane field when her house caught fire.

Her family lived on the harbor peninsula and were just sitting down to breakfast when they heard the sound of low flying planes followed by explosions. She and her father ran into the front yard, where they saw planes emblazoned with the orange-red logo of the Rising Sun.

“We could see the pilots’ faces and even the goggles that covered their eyes,” she remembers. She also could see smoke and fire everywhere, and the battleship USS Utah turned on its side in the water. She was six years old.

Since that day 83 years ago Nicholson has written several books about World War II, appeared on national TV shows and traveled to speak at international events. An American Girl doll was based on her first book “Pearl Harbor Child.” She served as an advisor in choosing the doll’s name, Nanea, and picking out its clothes.

In her book she describes returning to her partially damaged house after the bombing, playing with pieces of shrapnel, and living with food shortages and strict blackouts at night.

Her school was converted to a military hospital and some of her friends were sent to the mainland, while others of Japanese ancestry were isolated with their families on a nearby island. Both she and her 2-year-old brother were issued gas masks.

How did a Hawaiian-born woman come to live in Kansas City? Nicholson’s father grew up here before he joined the Army and was sent to Ft. Douglas in Utah. There he met her mother, a native Hawaiian, who was attending college at the University of Utah. They married, eventually moving to her home state where they lived in a house at Pearl Harbor. Her father worked for the U.S. Post Office and her mother worked at Pan American World Airways Clipper Base, a facility for long-range flying boats that transported passengers, cargo and mail before jets became common.

Nicholson’s mother taught her the art of hula, and together they entertained troops at USO shows during the war. Years later, while enrolled at the University of Hawaii, Nicholson won a talent search for her hula skills, traveling to Hollywood to perform. Her Missouri grandparents sent her a ticket to visit them in Kansas City.

During her visit she met Larry, her future husband. “That changed my whole life,” she says.

When the 25th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor bombing was commemorated, she wrote about her experiences for the Kansas City Star, asking her parents to write down their memories as well. For the 50th anniversary she learned about an event planned at the Arizona Museum in Pearl Harbor. She studied the list of speakers. None were female; none were Hawaiian. When she contacted the organizers, they were astonished to learn of a child eyewitness, and asked her to write her story.

“Pearl Harbor Child” was first published by the museum. Nicholson and her husband, a photographer and graphic designer, then acquired rights to the book and published 11 more editions, expanding the story to include accounts from other eyewitnesses.

Nicholson also wrote about a late-in-life friendship between a U.S. Marine bugler and a Japanese dive-bomber; about how Mexican Air Force pilots spurred the building of a small village school; and a collection (published by National Geographic) about how other children remembered WWII.

In addition to writing, Nicholson worked for a community mental health center in Kansas City as a psychotherapist. Now retired, she continues to speak at schools, libraries and museums. On this year’s Pearl Harbor Day she’ll be at the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas. On Sept. 2, “fingers crossed,” she’ll return to Pearl Harbor for the 80th anniversary of the end of WWII when a new exhibition, “Pathway to Peace: USS Missouri’s World War II Experience,” is unveiled.

She has ideas for future books. She’d also like to organize a speaking contest on the theme, “What can I do for peace?”

What she has done for peace is to tell her story, and the story of others from that long-ago era who have dissolved the hatred of old enemies and founded new friendships.

“I believe I have a mission as a primary source to an event that changed America in so many ways,” she says. “World War II was the most vicious, hideous destroyer of life that we’ve ever had. Now we’re really good friends with our enemies from that time—Japan, Germany, Italy. What does it mean?”

She hopes that in the coming year “this information can get into schools and kids can learn about this part of history and also learn about themselves. I say to them, ‘You’re going to have your own Pearl Harbor one of these days, and your teachers will help you get ready.’”

While not a teacher by profession, Nicholson is surely one by deed.

“Fear does not have to lead to prejudice, intolerance and hate,” she says. “It can lead to friendship.”

Nicholson’s books are suggested for ages 10-adult at pearlharborchild.com.