The boy needed a pair of slippers.
Joann Chow calls him a boy because he’s younger than her own son Christopher, a recent college graduate. And under different circumstances (if he lived under her roof, say) he’d be living a boy’s life, his most basic needs covered by parents with adequate means. Instead, he’s spent the last few years living among men, doing men’s work.
Chow first ran into the boy at Pier 37 at Honolulu Harbor, where she serves as a volunteer translator at a medical clinic for migrant fishermen operated by retired physician Craig Nakatsuka. He had come to Hawaii from Vietnam, as Chow herself had more than 40 years earlier.
“I asked him once why he came here at such a young age,” Chow said. “Being here, I know I wouldn’t send my son so far away just to earn $100 to send back home. But then I realized that if I were back in Vietnam, I would be in the same condition. I might have to make the same decisions.”
Without benefit of a visa or green card, the boy, like other migrant fishermen hailing from Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia, is legally prohibited from stepping foot ashore unless it is for emergency medical treatment.
And so Chow went to Walmart to buy the boy some slippers. The plan was to drop them off before the boy set sail again the next day, but when she called to arrange a time, she couldn’t get in touch. The boat left, the barefoot boy was gone and Chow was crushed.
Just recently, however, the boy returned on another fishing trip. Chow went to her car and retrieved the slippers from the trunk, where they had been sitting for two years, and gave them to him. But there was a new problem.
“He didn’t want to use them,” she said. “He wanted to keep them new so that he could show them to his family when he went back to Vietnam. I told him to use them. I told him I’d get him another pair before he went home.”
Chow was born and raised in Bien Hoa, Vietnam, and immigrated to the United States with her family in 1975, when she was 12 years old. Since then she has lived her own version of the American dream, graduating from Kalaheo High School, marrying and starting a family, and working her way up from keypuncher to analyst in a 35-year career at Hawaiian Telcom.
Her son Christopher was part of an initial group of prospective medical students who volunteered to provide basic health care to migrant fishermen at the harbor. Under Nakatsuka’s direction the clinic has grown from an unmoored operation forced to provide service right on the dock to an established, well-supplied (thanks to the Shiraki Medical Foundation) clinic with actual walls, lights and furnishings.
To facilitate communication with the fishermen, many of whom do not speak English, the clinic recruited bilingual parents of its student volunteers to serve as translators. Eager to do whatever she could to support her son, Chow committed to volunteering twice a week.
It became immediately apparent to Chow that the fishermen needed much more than just medical attention. Working for low wages under the harsh conditions of the open sea, the fisherman arrive at port sometimes sick or injured, always exhausted, and with little means of securing creature comforts.
Chow and her fellow volunteers do what they can for the men. Sometimes she prepares simple home-cooked Vietnamese meals as a balm for homesickness. Other times she’ll bring takeout food to give the fishermen a sense of the American or local cuisine that they themselves cannot leave the docks to sample.
Using her own money, Chow combs the racks at Ross Stores for long-sleeved shirts and other warm clothing. She buys sunglasses in bulk so the men can protect their eyes from direct sunlight and the harsh light reflected off the surface of the ocean. She also works with the Hawaii Lions to collect reading glasses for the men.
Once, Chow met an older fisherman who continued to work to pay off debts incurred while his wife was being treated for cancer. Surgery had stopped the spread of the disease, but not before it cost his wife her vision. Now, far from home, all the man wanted was to know was that his wife was safe and well.
Touched, Chow gave the man her smartphone so he could stay in touch with his wife while he was away. He refused. She secretly tucked the phone in a bag of clothes she gave to him; he returned it. She insisted; he resisted.
“Finally I told him, ‘If you want to pay me back later when you have some money, you can. But take the phone now. I insist,’” Chow said.
The man relented, then proceeded to give Chow as much fish as she could handle every time he saw her. It was the most he could do.
“Volunteering at the clinic has been a wake-up call for me,” Chow said. “I have so much, more than I need. The money I spend on myself, I could be spending to help these fishermen. I can’t provide 100 percent of what they need, but whatever I can do, I will. It’s what makes me happy.”
While no further volunteers are needed at this time, the clinic accepts donations of clothes, food and other noncash items. For more information, call 295-4634.
Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@staradvertiser.com.
