Center for Labor Education & Research, University of Hawaii - West Oahu: Honolulu Record Digitization Project

Honolulu Record, Volume 10 No. 9, Thursday, September 26, 1957 p. 3

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Hotel St. Bomb That "Sunk" Two Navies

There was a bomb, believe it or not, that sank the ships of two navies long before the atomic bomb and the H-bomb were seriously considered.

It happened on Hotel St. not so very long after the Russo-Japanese War and the man who exploded the bomb was none other than John C. Cluney, old-time police officer. But Cluney's naval triumph came long before he was a policeman. He was then only a youth, and a mischievous one at that.

Some Japanese promoters, Cluney recalls, were advertising "moving pictures" at a place on Hotel St, and since that invention had not yet been imported to Hawaii, the boy was curious. His father, an old seafarer out of New England, was skeptical, but young Cluney was interested.

So he and a friend paid 25 cents each to enter the establishment and see the sights. The pictures were "moving," all right, but not in the sense of the word Cluney had expected.

Against a backdrop of a seascape and a sky filled with bursting shells, the "ships" moved across the stage, propelled by two men underneath. They were "sound movies," too, for someone imitated the sound of cannon as the Russian ships nosed down into the stage and disappeared into the "watery deep."

Young Cluney and his friend left the show and decided they'd been taken, and they should wreak adequate revenge. So they got a giant-size "bamboo cracker," this being a cracker made of bamboo wrappings and confining an immense amount of powder, and an importation from China.

When the "battle" began again, Cluney slipped behind the stage, lit the cracker and threw it under where the two manipulators were intent on their art.

"When it went off," laughs Cluney, "the whole stage was wrecked. All the ships sank and the two Japanese took out through the crowd."

Police arrived out on Hotel St: and cast a suspicious eye toward Cluney and his friend, but after all, there was no evidence—except that both Russian and Japanese navies had lost the battle.

Malaya, the world's latest independent nation, has a population of 6 million. Nearly 38 percent are Chinese.

p /> I do not say that at odd hours a patient must be given the regular hot dinner or supper. Few people would expect this.
 
But what is so complicated about opening and heating a can of soup, making some toast, or preparing instant coffee or tea? Why cannot a night nurse do these simple things after the kitchen to closed? Is it just too much trouble?

It is only common humanity to feed the hungry. If our hospitals are too big, too complex, too impersonal to do these small kindnesses for the sick, something is very wrong.