When Susan and I moved to an apartment on the Ala Wai canal about two and a half years ago, we met a bunch of homeless people who have made the Ala Wai Promenade their home. One of those people was a Vietnam veteran in his 50s everyone called Sensei. He’s always hung out on the first bench off of Kalakaua Ave. Susan and I befriended him. Susan would sometimes do crosswords with him. And whenever we walked our dog, Jake, we would see Sensei and stop to chat for a little bit.
I don’t know how Sensei became homeless. He was already living on the Ala Wai when Susan and I met him. When we first met him, he had a job as a chef. But even working full-time, he couldn’t make enough money for a deposit on an apartment. He was fired when the restaurant owner found out he was homeless. She decided his being homeless meant he was also dirty. Sensei started collecting unemployment. He looked for another job, but he refused to work for $8/hour and he made more money on unemployment.
Sensei was always telling us great stories. In one of our many conversations, I told Sensei that he ought to write all of his great stories down and make a book. He said, “Oh, I’ve got an idea for a book… It’s called Aloha, My Ass!” – a book about being homeless in Hawaii. I thought it was a fantastic idea, and so I bought a pen and a composition book. I found a picture of a monkey bent over and looking through his own legs with “Aloha” written on his ass (pictured here). Using this picture, I made an “Aloha, My Ass” cover for the composition book and gave it and the pen to Sensei as a gift. Every once in awhile, I’d ask him how his book was coming along, and he’d say, “The book has been started…”
Like so many guys living along the Ala Wai, Sensei contracted MRSA, a horrible antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and he drank a little too much (I’m sure to numb the pain and shame of being homeless and feeling powerless to do anything about it). His health deteriorated.
Over the last few months, Sensei has seemed sick and tired a lot of the time. On Thursday of last week, I saw Sensei while walking Jake in the morning. He looked sick and all blown up like a balloon. I asked him how he was feeling. He said he thought he had a stomach virus and that he’d gained 15 pounds of water weight in the last two weeks because of a new medication he was put on.
On Friday at 2:30am, one of his friends found Sensei dead on his bench. When I heard the news, it broke my heart. I don’t know Sensei’s whole life story. I don’t even know his real name. But I know that he’s not the only war veteran who has not been taken care of upon returning home and who has ended up living on the street. To me, it feels terribly wrong and unjust for a soldier to come home, not get the care he needed, end up homeless, and die on a park bench.
Sensei’s cause of death is still unknown, but the homeless guys out there suspect a heart attack or stroke. Yesterday (Saturday), they had a little ceremony for Sensei. When Jake and I walked by his bench this morning, it was covered with a bunch of liquor bottles filled with flowers and that “Aloha, My Ass” notebook I gave him, which has become a place for people to write to Sensei and pay their respects. I added a little note of my own to the many pages of goodbyes. I started by saying, “Sensei, Aloha, My Ass is right.”
