The Last Volcano

by John Dvorak

  They left their house at Kilauea under the care of their housekeeper, Shizuka Yasunaka, who had worked for them since their marriage. The general upkeep of the house was the responsibility of Shizuka’s husband, Hideichi, who had worked for many years at the volcano observatory. His many tasks were described by Jaggar “as janitor, messenger, automobile mechanic, and outdoor man, he assists in operation of seismographs, and in recording the meteorological data, he sends weekly reports to the Weather Bureau and is invaluable as general caretaker of the grounds, the plumbing, carpentering repairs, and painting.”

  On November 22, 1941, a strong earthquake shook the island of Hawaii. Afterwards, Hideichi went to inspect the Jaggar house and its furnishing. The next day he mailed a short note, informing the Jaggars that the shaking had “caused excitement, but no damage.” On December 3, Hideichi wrote again, saying that the $30 the Jaggars had sent him for maintaining their house at Kilauea was $5 more than he was owed and that he was returning the difference by mail.

  Four days later, on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, the Jaggars were attending mass at St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Honolulu when Pearl Harbor was attacked. They watched as Japanese planes flew low overhead and heard the explosions of bombs and saw black dense clouds of burning oil rising from the harbor. The next few nights they and many of their neighbors slept in the basement of the library at the university for protection from possible future attacks. Rumors were rampant. All news had been suppressed. There were no commercial radio broadcasts.

  On the afternoon of December 7, martial law was declared in the Hawaiian Islands. The movement of civilians was restricted. Those who were Japanese nationals had additional restrictions that prohibited them from changing residences or occupations or “otherwise travel or move from place to place.” Those additional restrictions applied to Hideichi and Shizuka Yasunaka: He had been born in Japan; she had been born on the island of Hawaii before annexation, and so United States government regarded her as a Japanese national.

  The additional restriction meant they could not go to stores and buy goods. And so they sought help from Thomas Jaggar, writing to him, asking if he could send a variety of garden seeds. On February 19, 1942, he wrote back saying he had purchased five pounds of cabbage seeds, the only type of seed he could find, and was sending it to them immediately.

  The same day President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 that authorized the evacuation of all persons who were deemed a threat to national security from the West Coast to relation camps inland. The same day, an order was sent from Washington, D.C., to the military governor of the Hawaiian Islands, Army General Delos Emmons, who was told to gather all persons of Japanese ancestry who lived in the islands and intern them on the small island of Molokai for the duration of the war.

  Emmons balked at the order. There were more than 150,000 such people living in the islands, and, as Emmons knew, they were essential to the economy of the islands, and, hence, to the war effort. More than half worked on sugar plantations. Nearly all the truck drivers and carpenters were of Japanese ancestry. He informed people in Washington, D.C., who modified the order. In their estimation, about ten percent of the Japanese-American population in the islands represented a security risk, and so those people were to be sent to the United States mainland for interment, beginning, as the new order read, “with the most dangerous.” Again, Emmons balked, delaying his response for three months. Finally, he wired the War Department that, according to his sources, about one percent of the Japanese-American population might be a security risk. The War Department agreed. And so a quota was set. Emmons would have to send 1,500 people to these internment camps.

  Francis Kaneaki Yasunaka, the youngest of the four Yasunaka children, would always remember the day. He was nine years old. He had come home one afternoon and, to his surprise, his mother was not home. She was always home. He went to nearby houses to search for her. He found her crying—as she would throughout the night—and continued to say: “They took dad away. They came and took dad away.”

  That morning, Wednesday, July 15, 1942, two men arrived unexpectedly at the Yasunaka house. One man was from the Office of Navy Intelligence and the other from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Navy man took Hideichi Yasunaka to a nearby military camp and put him under guard. The other man searched the house, finding a photograph of the Emperor of Japan and a medal won by Hideichi’s father during the 1905 Russo-Japanese War.

  A military tribunal of three officers was held that afternoon at the camp. They were shown the items taken from the Yasunaka’s house. They heard testimony—from whom was never disclosed—that Yasunaka had been seen socializing with officers of the Japanese Navy before the war.

  That was true. Since the 1920s, ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy did visit the Hawaiian Islands, and, when they did, people were encouraged to welcome the ships’ officers and crews. Stores and hotels were decorated, and lanterns strung along streets. During one of those visits, in 1925, a squadron of ships called at Hilo. More than three thousand Japanese officers and sailors came ashore, many of them boarded in private homes, the residents encouraged by the United States Department of State to do so. And they took tours of Kilauea. Since Yasunaka was the only one of the observatory staff who spoke Japanese, he led the tours. As a show of appreciation, that night officers of the Japanese Navy hosted at a dinner at the Volcano House in Yasunaka’s honor. It was this association—he had given several tours to visiting Japanese Navy officers and sailors—and having in his possession a photograph of the Emperor and a Japanese military medal—that the three officers of the tribunal pronounced Yasunaka a security risk. He was sent to the Navy yard at Sand Island on Oahu to await transfer to an internment camp. He contacted Jaggar for help.

  Jaggar knew the military governor, General Emmons. They had worked together planning the bombing of Mauna Loa in 1935. Jaggar wrote to the General, on behalf of Yasunaka and of another former employee of the observatory, Asao Okuda, who was also being held at Sand Island. Okuda had been a mechanic at the observatory and, at the time of his arrest, was living on Oahu, working for Jaggar at the university.

  “Hideichi Yasunaka has served me since 1924,” Jaggar wrote at the beginning of a letter to General Emmons. “He has exhibited perfect loyalty to me and the service of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory for many years.” Then, to reassure Emmons, Jaggar added, “I am convinced that this man is not dangerous. Both Mrs. Jaggar and I are willing to vouch for his loyalty to the United States.” A similar letter was sent for Okuda.

  Emmons authorized Okuda’s release provided either Thomas or Isabel Jaggar accompanied him wherever he went. They built a small house on their property near the university where Okuda and his wife lived for the remainder of the war. The case of Yasunaka did not have such a favorable outcome.

  “The information contained in your letter has been weighed,” wrote Emmons. “The conclusion reached is that the original order was fully warranted. The request for his release is, therefore, denied.”

  Shizuka Yasunaka now had a difficult decision to make: whether to remain in the islands with their children, or have them and her accompany her husband to an internment camp. She chose the latter.

  She packed seven boxes, all that she was allowed to bring. Five she filled with clothing. Another contained her husband’s carpentry tools. In the last she packed her sewing machine, not knowing where they would live or under what conditions.

  On March 2, 1943, the Yasunaka family was in the final group of Japanese internees to leave the Hawaiian Islands. Two weeks later, they reached a desolate spot near Topaz, Utah. Here they entered a camp, a square mile of tarpapered wooden barracks surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards. Each barrack had a similar division of rooms: one room to a family. Each room had a potbelly stove and army cots. The sole source of light was a bare bulb that hung overhead.

  After the end of the war, the Yasunaka family was released and returned to the Hawaiian Islands. The oldest son,
Gary, then enlisted in the United States Army and was sent immediately to work as an interpreter in Japan. From that experience, he decided to make the Army his career. On April 25, 1951, he was part of an artillery group that was overrun during a Chinese offensive in Korea. He is listed today as “missing in action, presumed dead.”

  Eventually Hideichi Yasunaka killed himself over the grief of his lost son. Shizuka then moved the family to California where I met her as I was doing research for this book. Because the family’s tragic story could be traced back to Hideichi’s association with the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, I was concerned how she would receive me.

  All apprehension disappeared as soon as I entered her house, because the first thing I saw, hanging prominently on a wall, was a portrait of Thomas Jaggar.

  During the short time we talked, I asked her what was the daily routine when she worked for the Jaggars. She said that her family lived in a small house between the Jaggars’ house and the observatory. She waited each morning until both the Jaggars had left, then she went over the cleaned the house and collected the laundry. She returned in the afternoon to cook dinner. Pork chops was Thomas Jaggar’s favorite meal.

  One last significant point: As we talked, I noticed that Shizuka, who was then 102 years old, still referred to Thomas and Isabel Jaggar as “Papa” and “Mama.”

  Ten days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Major James Snedeker of the United States Marine Corps came to see Jaggar. They had met in October 1940 when Snedeker was at Hilo Bay watching a demonstration of the Honukai. At the time, the United States military had no such vehicles, while Jaggar had already designed and used two. Snedeker was impressed by the Honukai and had it shipped to the Marine base at Kanehoe on Oahu where engineers disassembled it and used it as the basis for a new type of military vehicle, the DUKW (pronounced “duck”), which would transport troops and goods over land and water. More than two thousand such vehicles were produced during the Second World War, playing a critical part in amphibious landings in the Pacific and on D-Day in Normandy in France.* For this contribution, after the war, Jaggar received the Franklin Burr Award for scientific innovation from the National Geographic Society. But, now, as the war in the Pacific was beginning, Snedeker had a special request from those who would be planning the war.

  Jaggar had traveled to places that would soon be major battlegrounds. He had been to Japan four times, the Aleutian Islands three times and the South Pacific twice. Based on his travels—and his scientific knowledge—Snedeker asked that Jaggar write a series of essays for the United States Navy that would be useful in the conduct of the war. In all, Jaggar would produce 2,205 essays, most one or two pages in length and many illustrated by his drawings or photographs. They included such titles as “Aleutian Shorelines,” “Disaster Expeditions in Japan” and “Steamblast Disasters.” After the war, Jaggar assembled a small part of his essays into a book, Volcanoes Declare War, which he dedicated “to helpmeet and campmate Isabel Jaggar whose horse crushed her against a tree . . . Whose gloves fell into a red hot crack and burned up . . . Who slept in a lava tunnel beside the immortal remains of a desiccated billy goat . . . And loved it all.”

  With his days of adventure, travel and field work behind him, Jaggar’s lasting legacy, though now largely forgotten in scientific circles, extends far beyond the writing of essays for the Navy. His work is the foundation of almost every aspect of volcano research today.

  The first volcanic gases collected at an eruptive fissure were made at Kilauea in 1912 by Shepherd, Day, Dodge and Lancaster. Jaggar continued to collect gas samples—and improve on the technique. Of particular note are the pristine samples he collected, essentially working alone, at Kilauea in 1917 and at Mauna Loa in 1919. For Mauna Loa, his are still the only gas samples collected during an eruption of that volcano.

  The sampling of volcanic gases is now routine and, as is much of the work at active volcanoes, has been automated by the use of continuous sensors. These measurements show the variability of volcanic gas emissions and continue to reconfirm that, after water vapor, carbon dioxide is the major gas emitted by volcanoes. (The measurements also show that, during the last century, the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by volcanoes, even during major eruptions, is greatly dwarfed by that emitted by cars or by industry.)

  The recording of earthquakes continues to be the key to predicting volcanic eruptions. For centuries people had fled when the ground started shaking near a volcano. And they returned when the shaking stopped, whether the volcano had erupted or not, not knowing whether events too small to be felt were continuing. Starting with the 1914 eruption of Mauna Loa, with Jaggar and Wood standing in the Whitney Vault, watching the subtle vibrations recorded by the Bosch-Omori seismograph, it is clear that such activity can be recorded reliably. And, today, it is routine to follow the migration of earthquakes through a volcano as magma pushes its way toward the surface and erupts.

  It took Jaggar decades to convince others that the Bosch-Omori seismograph was also recording a slight tilting of the ground and that such tilt changes were related to magma movement within Kilauea. Today the movement of magma is recorded with precision land surveying equipment and by space-based systems. The Global Positioning System is being used to record movements as small as 1/20 of an inch (about 1 millimeter) at dozens of active volcanoes. Satellites with radar equipment can reveal the rise or fall of the ground surface over a broad area—often the only way to determine if the surface of a remote volcano is moving—and whether the volcano is building toward an eruption.

  As is well known, at the end of the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union became locked in a confrontation that came to be known as the Cold War. At the time, some military strategists thought war between the two former allies was inevitable. And so, at least in Washington, D.C., plans were made, priorities were shifted and departments reorganized. One of the small changes came as a request from the War Department to the Geological Survey to undertake a program of volcano investigations in Alaska. It was duly done. As part of the program, on December 28, 1947, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory was transferred from the National Park Service to the Geological Survey.

  Jaggar was pleased by the decision—and by the prospect of a renewed federal program of volcano research. Moreover, he was doubly pleased because the man who would run the program was Howard Powers. Powers had begun his career as a geologist by working as Jaggar’s assistant after Finch moved to California to start a second observatory at Lassen. Powers had been one of the casualties during the cutbacks in the 1930s when his job was eliminated. But he returned immediately after the war. And, now that he was in charge of the new program, it seemed inevitable that Powers would fully integrate the work of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory with the larger goals of working in Alaska.

  Powers arrived at Kilauea in May 1948 to discuss the matter with Jaggar and with the three members of the observatory staff. Finch was still the director. Working with him was a geologist and a machinist.

  Powers probably began by quoting a memo by the Director of the Geological Survey that stated that the new volcano program would be “centered on the observation of active volcanism near military bases” in Alaska. The work itself would consist primarily of gathering geologic information that could be of military use, for example, the nature of beaches or the frequency and violence of eruptions. From that, the military would know the most suitable places to locate harbors and airfields.

  But what of the future of volcano work in Hawaii? To that question Powers had a disappointing answer.

  Though the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory had recently been transferred back to the Geological Survey, its work did not fit into the goals of the new program. Hawaiian volcanoes had mild eruptions, while those of Alaska exploded, and so what was learned in Hawaii could not be applied to Alaska. Moreover, Hawaiian volcanoes had not been very active in recent years. Kilauea had not erupted since 1934. And the two most recent eruptions of Mauna Loa had been brief, the
one in 1942 lasting two weeks and the one in 1943 lasting only three days.

  And so, Powers continued, in order to direct all efforts toward Alaska, Finch would be retired, reducing the volcano staff in Hawaii to two men. And those two men would work for another year or so on a part-time basis and at half salaries. Their purpose would be to close the observatory.

  In the aftermath, Jaggar wrote to friend, telling how established science had betrayed him. But there was nothing he could do. These were the closing years of his life. And he would have to watch how, with a wave of a bureaucratic hand, his forty years of work at Kilauea would come to an end.

  On December 31, 1949, his sister, Anna Louise Jaggar, died. She had spent her working career at the botanical garden at Harvard University, achieving a small measure of notoriety as a cataloguer of plants. When she retired, she returned to the family lodge in Nova Scotia, the one their father had purchased in 1886. Throughout her long life, her brother had sent her $50 a month to supplement her meager wages.

  As her only surviving relative, Thomas Jaggar made the long trip to Nova Scotia to settle legal matters and to gather family heirlooms. It was a trip that would be remembered for the four fires.

  To get to the Jaggar lodge, one had to travel from Maine across the Bay of Fundy to the small community of Digby. Then it was a short train ride to Smith’s Cove where the Jaggar lodge was located. Having arrived in Digby, Jaggar was waiting at the station for the next train when a man approached him. He asked if the visitor was Professor Jaggar from Hawaii. Jaggar said he was. The man said he had bad news. The previous night the Jaggar lodge had burned to the ground. Everything was lost in the flames. That was the first fire.