COURTESY PHOTO
Ramona Okumura, the Hawaii woman who was trapped in Gaza, is shown working on a prosthetic.
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Ramona Okumura, the Hawaii woman who was stuck in Gaza when the Israel-Hamas war broke out last month, crossed the border into freedom today.
Okumura’s family said they received a text from her at around 4 a.m. Hawaii time, saying she had caught a shuttle over the Egyptian border and was on her way to Cairo.
“Luv to everyone who helped get me out,” she said in the text. “Pray for the people of Gaza who now don’t have us as shields from harm.”
She was one of hundreds of foreign nationals, as well as and dozens of seriously injured Palestinians, who were allowed to leave Gaza today Opens in a new tab after more than three weeks of war, according to the Associated Press.
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Okumura, 71, was born and raised in Honolulu. She taught at her alma mater, Hawaii Baptist Academy, before moving to Seattle, where she worked as a prosthetics technician and lecturer at the University of Washington for 27 years.
Since retiring in 2017, the woman began volunteering her expertise in prosthetics as part of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund’s Gaza Amputee Project, helping youngsters who lost their limbs due to regional violence. She has also trained medical staff to fashion artificial limbs using basic materials.
