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Continuous negotations with the authorities resulted, early in
January, in permission for small groups (30 in one city block) to
resume classes. Friends of the school promptly offered a room, a
lanai, or a garage, and when Central Union Church offered its
Sunday School buildings, the military order was modified to allow
a hundred children at a time in those well-scattered rooms. This
was just about the size of the senior class, reduced as it was by
evacuations. Feverish work started on a schedule for Senior
Academy by which seniors had a four-hour session in the morning
while juniors took over the same rooms in the afternon. Sopho-
mores were housed in small groups in neighboring homes in the
Punahou district. Teachers, rather than pupils, moved from class
to class to save time and precious gasoline. The students were
required (!) to go barefoot to save wear on borrowed floors. "It
takes a war" said the first post-blitz issue of Ka Punahou, "to make
our dreams come true."

And so on January 12th, while public school teachers were
still working at their registration, Punahou reopened with only
three weeks of school time lost. It was a makeshift pro-
gram conducted almost wholly without equipment, and war-time
safety measures took precedence over "mere school work."
On the curch grounds an exercise period required of the boys
was spent with pick and shovel deepening the slit trenches which
the army had started for them. Frequent practice drills were
staged and several times when the sirens blew for a real alarm all
hands filed into the muddy trenches in record time and crouched
there until the "all clear" sounded. These occasions gave
enough feeling of real danger to make the boys dig away without
complaint. Girls and most women teachers adopted slacks as
standard school costume, and everyone carried his gas mask
everyone in those early days of tension. One of the noticeable
things at that time was the apparent realization by these older
children of the precious thing their schooling was. They, like
their teachers, had faced weeks of wondering if it would ever be
resumed. Now that they were back, they showed a real desire to
learn, in spite of interruptions, distractions, and inconveniences.
Homework in as yet unventilated blackout rooms; instinctively
listening for the sirens with half one's mind; classrooms equipped
only with pupils and a teacher -- none of these things prevented
the young people from doing a remarkable job of learning.

While Senior Academy was settling itself at Central Union and
vicinity, the Junior School was split by grades into three parts.
The seventh grade was in Manoa Valley in several homes near
Mid-Pacific School, whose play-pavilion was used by one group.
Ninth-grade children gathered farther up the valley in the homes
of Dr. Doolittle, Campbell Crozier, Montague Cooke, and John B.

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