<Begin Segment 11>

TI: Now I'm curious. You're, at this point, nine, ten years old.

MH: Eight and nine.

TI: Right, and you're probably becoming more and more aware of other kids around.

MH: No, actually, there, I went to school with the other children, but I was the Commandant's daughter, and I'd also gotten accustomed to a solitary life. And so I never really had, I was not playing with the other children. The only child I played with was my brother Charlie.

TI: So explain that to me. You're the Commandant's daughter...

MH: Therefore I was sort of, you know, not the one that they would associate with.

TI: And the reason being is that...

MH: The rank was too high.

TI: Okay. So even at the, at the children level, there's that consciousness of rank.

MH: Oh, yes.

TI: Who can play... that's interesting.

MH: But you see, I'd already had this pattern of solitary play from Honolulu where we lived, way out in the wilderness, and there were no other children around. And then in Newport, it was a year there, and I didn't get to know anybody, and then here.

TI: Okay, so I didn't realize. I understood the transitory nature of moving around, but you also had this loneliness, or this solitary sort of existence by being the daughter of a high level...

MH: And also I was a, I was a complete bookworm, so I was always reading all the time, and that's a solitary occupation.

TI: Okay. By any chance, when you were in places like Cuba, are you able to be with the locals there in terms of the local Cuban population?

MH: No. The naval base, naval station was completely closed off. The only... actually, the servants we had were not native, they were from Haiti, I think. And there was this, this one man, the one that gave me the pony, he was a, had been a U.S. Navy enlisted man, and when he left the Navy he started in business in Cuba, and had a very prosperous business. And so Dad had dealings with him, and I remember one time we went to visit him at his home, which was on the other side of Guantanamo Bay. And we went to the small village there where he had, on the railroad, which is his railroad, he had this car was on the railroad, the wheels had been put on the rails there. So we traveled up in this car.

TI: So it was a car like an automobile car?

MH: Yeah, automobile. We traveled up in this automobile to his place that he had, this estate that he had there. And the thing that -- and he had, you know, quite a lovely tropical mansion, and in his garden he had peacocks, tame peacocks all over the place. And also, he served peacock. My sister remembers that they, we ate peacock there, and said it was very tough, but I don't remember that.

TI: Boy, again, it's almost like a scene out of a movie. I think of this car on rails, and you drive up there, peacocks...

MH: He took, he took a liking to me, this man. His name was Shorty Osment, and he took a liking to me. So after we went back to the, to the naval base, he sent over this pony for me. And this pony must have been used as a cart horse or something, it had terrible saddle sores on it, it was in terrible condition. No, no... I don't know if you know about horses, but if you use the bridle too hard on them, their mouth gets very hardened and they won't, they won't pay attention to what you tell them to do. And when I first got him, I had to, if I wanted to get on him, I had to ride him bareback because he had to recover from these saddle sores. I adored him. I just, he was the most wonderful horse in the world, as far as I was concerned.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.