Russia has been in the news this year, with the invasion of the Crimea and eastern parts of Ukraine. Russia seems very far away to most of us in Hawaii, but we have a few connections you might not be aware of.
First, it is our closest Asian neighbor. Because the Philippines and Japan curve away from us to the west, and the Sakhalin Peninsula extends well to the east, that makes Russia closer than any other Asian country. Pull out a map and check it out.
Another connection is that Russia wanted to take over Hawaii in 1815. It built two churches and four forts here. The ruins of Fort Elizabeth in Waimea, Kauai, are still visible. Two were near Hanalei. The other was at Honolulu Harbor until the 1850s. King Kamehameha I figured out what they were up to and kicked them out. The Russian Fort gave Fort Street its name.
The other Russian connection I have heard about took place nearly 100 years ago. More than a dozen prominent citizens from Hawaii volunteered to travel to Russia to help the Red Cross with World War I refugees. It’s a story of personal sacrifice.
"On Nov. 15, 1918, only four days after World War I ended, my grandfather Henry A. Walker Sr. and more than a dozen Hawaii Red Cross volunteers boarded the Japanese ship Shinyo Maru bound for Vladivostok on Russia’s Pacific coast," former Hawaii Attorney General Michael Lilly told me.
Walker wanted to serve in World War I but was disqualified because he once had tuberculosis. "The Red Cross expedition satisfied his itch," Lilly says. "As a child, he regaled me with his Siberian exploits. He spoke of the cold Siberian steppes, through which he operated a relief train."
Joining Walker on the relief effort was former Honolulu Star-Bulletin Editor Riley H. Allen, Alfred Castle, Harold Castle, Gerrit P. Wilder, Herbert Dowsett and Dr. William D. Baldwin, whose father founded Alexander & Baldwin.
During his Red Cross service in Russia, Baldwin distinguished himself as director of the Vladivostok Hospital.
Hundreds of thousands of destitute refugees were pouring into Siberian cities from all over Russia, Lilly says. They had been struggling to survive for two years in converted prisons and abandoned buildings without heat, plumbing, ventilation, sanitation or adequate food and medical care.
One of the chief problems confronting the Red Cross was to feed, clothe, shelter and provide medical attention for these refugees. They equipped and operated many barracks, where lodging was furnished and meals served. It also established a string of hospitals, anti-typhus and dental stations stretching from the Pacific coast to the Ural Mountains. This encompassed a distance exceeding 3,500 miles.
Allen became world famous and the subject of a book, "The Wild Children of the Urals," by Floyd Miller, for personally rescuing and transporting 800 refugee children from Siberia around the world for repatriation to Eastern Europe.
Walker ran a relief train from Vladivostok into the Russian interior and back, repeatedly picking up refugees and returning them across the Siberian wastes to Vladivostok. Then he’d turn right around and go again back on another mission of mercy.
The "front" was never very far away, and the haunting rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire was often heard in the distance. To get past corrupt guards, Walker bribed them with 1-pound bags of scarce sugar and Epsom salt.
Walker was also involved in one of the most bizarre relief efforts ever conducted. It involved former Czech soldiers that had been cut off from returning to their homeland in Europe by Bolshevik troops. The Czechs were fighting for the czar’s White Russian militia.
In the summer of 1919, Walker placed 2,000 Czechs onboard three ships to escort them home the long way around the world. They couldn’t travel the 2,000 miles west to Czechoslovakia, so Walker arranged for them to go east, 20,000 miles. Walker traveled with them.
The journey was long and arduous. From Vladivostok the ships sailed across the Sea of Japan and the Pacific Ocean to San Diego, a distance of more than 5,600 miles.
From San Diego they traveled through the Panama Canal to Norfolk, Va. From Norfolk they sailed 4,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean to France where they boarded a train to Prague.
The entire trip consumed two months. All told, Walker and his refugees traveled nearly the entire circumference of the earth. When they arrived, bad news awaited them.
After Walker and his troops arrived in Prague, they sadly learned that most of the Czech soldiers’ wives had remarried.
The Hawaii Red Cross workers in Russia began to draw down shortly after Walker departed on the SS Archer for Europe. Less than a year later, on April 1, 1920, the last American troops vacated Vladivostok bound for the Philippines.
Allen returned to his job as editor of the Star-Bulletin. He died in 1966 at the age of 81. Walker became president of AMFAC, Hawaii’s largest company. He died in 1969 at the age of 83.
Baldwin co-founded the Honolulu Medical Group and served as chairman of the Kula Sanitarium until his death in 1943 at the age of 70.
Castle developed much of the town of Kailua. Today the Harold K.L. Castle Foundation is the largest private foundation in Hawaii. Castle donated land to Castle Medical Center, Castle High School, Hawaii Pacific University and ‘Iolani School.
Wilder became a botanist and served in the territorial legislature. Dowsett’s family donated the land for Shriners Hospital.
"They were an amazing group of community leaders, who gave up their personal lives to service above self," Lilly concludes. "There was an ethic and sense of duty that those leaders had that caused them to take on this selfless task on behalf of the Red Cross and humanity."
