In 1924, a baby named Daniel was born dead but brought back to life by a des­per­ate mid­wife in a Hawai­ian slum. His moth­er, exhaust­ed but prayer­ful, named him after the bib­li­cal Daniel, who faced great tri­als. Daniel’s fam­i­ly immi­grat­ed to Hawaii from Japan in 1899, dri­ven by a sig­nif­i­cant debt incurred by his great-grand­fa­ther, Wasaburo, after a fire destroyed homes in their vil­lage. To repay the debt, Wasaburo’s son, Asa­kichi, left Japan for Hawaii, where he worked on a sug­ar­cane plan­ta­tion, intend­ing to send mon­ey home. How­ev­er, the mea­ger wages made it dif­fi­cult to pay off the debt, lead­ing to a long strug­gle for the fam­i­ly.

In time, Asa­kichi built a bath­house to gen­er­ate extra income, while his wife made tofu cakes. Their son, Hyotaro, was raised amid these strug­gles and even­tu­al­ly sought edu­ca­tion, attend­ing var­i­ous schools, but the fam­i­ly remained in debt after years of hard work. Hyotaro mar­ried Kame, and togeth­er they wel­comed Daniel into their mod­est home.

Daniel grew up in pover­ty, often feel­ing unat­trac­tive. How­ev­er, he shared his expe­ri­ence of pover­ty with class­mates, not­ing that almost every­one around him was also poor. Hawai­ian schools were infor­mal­ly seg­re­gat­ed by lan­guage, impact­ing Daniel’s edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties. In response, Hyotaro and Kame switched to Eng­lish at home to ensure bet­ter school­ing for their son.

A sig­nif­i­cant event in Daniel’s ear­ly life was a severe arm injury. After a failed ini­tial treat­ment, he under­went suc­cess­ful surgery, thanks to the kind­ness of Dr. Craig, who for­gave the oper­a­tion’s cost in exchange for Daniel’s promise to be a good stu­dent. This inspired Daniel to aspire to become a sur­geon him­self.

As Daniel pro­gressed through high school, he devel­oped inter­ests in his­to­ry, music, and com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice. How­ev­er, every­thing changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly on Decem­ber 7, 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Har­bor. The dev­as­tat­ing event trans­formed his life and the lives of Hawai­ian res­i­dents of Japan­ese descent, includ­ing Daniel’s own fam­i­ly.

Chaos ensued in Hon­olu­lu as Daniel rushed to help, moti­vat­ed by his train­ing in first aid. The after­math of the attack exposed him to tragedy and vio­lence as he and oth­ers respond­ed to the needs of a dev­as­tat­ed com­mu­ni­ty. Amidst dis­crim­i­na­tion and fear of Japan­ese-Amer­i­cans in the U.S., Daniel embod­ied the resilience and courage of his her­itage and his deter­mi­na­tion to serve, an ambi­tion born from love and grat­i­tude.

The chap­ter sets the stage for Daniel’s com­plex jour­ney as both a sur­vivor of per­son­al and his­tor­i­cal strug­gle, ulti­mate­ly ampli­fy­ing his com­mit­ment to ser­vice in a bro­ken world.