One of my favorite characters on Oahu is a man named Alan Lloyd. Lloyd, 84, is a former Hawaiian Electric Co. employee and an expert on the Battle of Midway. He lectures all over the world about it. He was also, most likely, the youngest employee in Hawaiian Airlines’ history.
"As far as I know, I was the youngest employee ever at Hawaiian Airlines," Lloyd says. During World War II, in the summer of 1943, Lloyd got a job as a baggage boy at the airline when he was just 13 years old. Many of the adult men had joined the war effort.
His boss asked him on his first day on the job day how old he was, Lloyd recalled.
"Thirteen," Lloyd said.
"When’s your next birthday?"
"Next week," Lloyd replied.
"Good. Don’t tell anyone until you’re 14," the superior advised.
"I think I may be the only 13-year-old they ever hired. I was already 6 feet tall and looked older.
"During my second summer, when I was 15, several flight attendants were sick one day. I was asked to fill in. I was happy to do it. I worked the Honolulu-to-Molokai-to-Maui 12 noon flight. It landed at Molokai, then Puunene, Maui, because Kahului was a naval air station back then.
"It was a rough flight in the DC-3 over the Molokai mountains. The tradewinds over the mountains would buffet the plane. The windows of all flights were blacked out so travelers couldn’t spy or take photos from the air of military installations, and a good number of the passengers got airsick. I was a little woozy, too, but it gave me a new appreciation for the regular flight attendants.
"Each leg of the flight would be about 30 minutes, and there was 45 minutes on the ground to load passengers and baggage. We’d be home around 3:30 in the afternoon."
Lloyd was a steward just that one day. "But I think that made me the youngest steward in their history."
The first four planes Hawaiian bought when it started in 1929 were Sikorsky S-38 biplanes, Lloyd notes. Back then it was called Inter-Island Airways and was inspired by Charles Lindbergh’s flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927, according to the book "Hawaiian Airlines: A Pictorial History of the Pioneer Carrier in the Pacific."
The S-38s were twin-engine amphibians with retractable landing gear. They carried nine passengers and flew 90 mph.
Lloyd remembers his first airplane flight was in an S-38 when he was 10. "My dad was an engineer for Dole and took the family to Lanai in 1939 for a vacation.
"The co-pilot really had to work hard," Lloyd recalls. "He loaded the baggage and started the engines. They had to be hand-cranked. It took about two minutes for each engine and sometimes longer."
Hawaiian’s next four planes were Sikorsky S-43s, called "Baby Clippers."
They were handsome, twin-engines airplanes with shiplike fuselages. They carried 16 passengers at around 125 mph.
Hawaiian planes Nos. 9 to 11 were DC-3s. DC stood for "Douglas Commercial." They cruised at more than 200 mph. They revolutionized plane travel, crossing the U.S. in about 16 hours (with three stops for refueling). Even though they went out of production in 1949, a few hundred are still in use today.
"After the war several of Hawaiian’s planes were sold to the Japanese," Lloyd said. "The new owners, inspecting the DC-3s, noticed eight aluminum patches riveted into place on one plane and asked what they were."
"Those are from your bullets," Lloyd recalls being told.
The morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Hawaiian’s No. 9 plane, waiting to load on the first flight of the day at John Rodgers Field, was strafed.
At 16, Lloyd was captain of the Punahou Rifle Team & Company E of the Hawaii Territorial Guard Rifle Team.
"We were bivouacked at Mid-Pacific golf course and tasked with protecting Lanikai homes from vandalism following the April 1, 1946, tsunami," Lloyd recalls.
"The tsunami had moved some of the beach houses on Mokulua Drive 50 feet mauka. We patrolled the beach and guarded the area."
Nothing much happened until one day when they caught a truck trying to leave Lanikai with several stolen refrigerators.
Lloyd says that the Hawaii National Guard had been mobilized and went off to fight in World War II. The governor created the Hawaiian Territorial Guard to protect the state.
"I joined early in 1945 and went through jungle training at Kahana Valley on the Windward side."
Lloyd became a sergeant in the guard. His six-man squad was Company E (for Easy). In the final battalion rifle competition, his squad was the only one to have everyone medal.
When the war was over, the Hawaii National Guard returned home, and the Territorial Guard was disbanded. After college at Swarthmore in Pennsylvania, Lloyd worked for Westinghouse, Maui Electric and HECO for 43 years. He retired in 1996.
Next week, in honor of our visiting president, I’ll write about his growing up on Oahu.
———
Bob Sigall, author of the “Companies We Keep” books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories each Friday of Hawaii people, places and companies. Email him at Sigall@Yahoo.com.
