[intro music plays] [sound of ocean waves] HIKI NŌ, Hawai‘i's new wave of storytellers.

[intro music continues] Aloha and welcome to this week's episode of HIKI NŌ, Hawai‘i's new wave of storytellers.

I’m Saige Adaro, a senior at Pearl City High School on O‘ahu.

And I’m Olivia Faiola, also a senior at Pearl City High.

We’re actually here on campus and delighted to host this special episode.

It’s February, the month of love.

That’s why this episode will include stories about all kinds of love.

From the students at Āliamanu Middle School, we'll hear a story of the strong bonds between fathers and daughters, no matter the distance, and we'll meet the HIKI NŌ mentor who helped them shape their story.

We'll meet two students from H.P.

Baldwin High School on Maui who share their deeply personal stories of how their definition of love evolves as they grow up.

A student from Kapa‘a High School on Kaua‘i will share her story of musical passions.

We'll rewatch some classics from the HIKI NŌ archives about different forms of love and enlighten us about the term bromance.

We'll also learn how to show love for your community during the pandemic from our classmates here at Pearl City High School who show us how to properly wear a mask.

[sound of an ocean wave] But first, we want to start this episode off with a How-To that you may find useful before Valentine's Day: how to approach your crush, from our classmates here at Pearl City High School.

Pearl City High School, located in Hawai‘i, has over 1,000 students, ranging from different backgrounds, but high school life does get hard: trying to fit in, homework due the next day, long lectures you'll eventually forget.

It's tough.

Well, you get to see your friends, at least, and that wonderful individual you like.

Well, you may be asking, "How do I approach them, or get them to even like me?” Here are some steps you can follow.

Be confident.

Look at yourself and say, "You got this."

Okay.

Now since you're confident enough, let's take a step further and talk to them.

Maybe ask them about their hobbies, or their favorite food.

Keep them entertained.

Talking to them allows both you and them to have funny conversations to deep meaning talks that you won't even share to your friends.

All those steps aren't going to waste.

Ask them to hang out and get to really know them.

Who knows?

They might even have a little crush on you.

At the end of the day, if they do or don't like you, you've grown so much.

You're all smiling and confident now.

So just be yourself.

[sound of an ocean wave] That's pretty good advice, actually.

Next, let's see how military families stay strong, even through tough deployments from the students of Āliamanu Middle School on O‘ahu.

Many kids just think of their parents as the ones who support them, spend time with them and take them on fun adventures.

On the other hand, military kids don't get as much quality time with their mom or dad.

Military children often experience their parents traveling far away for weeks or months, and what they do when they're gone and how they feel when they leave the families can be surprising.

Aaron Williams is one military father.

He has been in the military for 20 years.

Throughout my career, uh, some of the standout experiences have definitely been the travel, uh, getting to travel to Egypt, uh, to raise, and, money and do some charity work for some of the mentally handicapped kids.

He has a daughter, Alanah, who has her own opinions on how she feels about him leaving.

Deployments and having your dad being sent to different places can be an emotional rollercoaster for military children.

Personally, having times in my life when I was younger when my dad was gone, it was sad.

But since I still got to talk to him, he got to tell me about all the crazy things he did.

Like when he went to Egypt and he got to go sand surfing and scuba diving, or when he went to Kosovo.

So, on the other side of things, there's also things that he didn't know about that he struggled through.

Like, he struggled through depression and PTSD early on in his military career, and I didn't get to understand those things until now that I'm older.

Being away from my family is rough.

Uh, the travel and deployments are definitely an exciting experience, but they're some of the loneliest experiences and, and times of my life.

Um, the isolation and being away from the family definitely affects your, your mental attitude, as well as some of your, your positivity.

So, it's definitely tough being away from the family.

Gregory Arnold is another military father who has been in the Navy for 20 years.

He, too, has his opinions about deployments and leaving.

Being apart from your family on deployment is, is one of the worst parts about long deployments.

I've done five of them total.

Um, each one has lasted about a year in, in time.

So, it's a lot of time away from the family when, when you think about that and you put it all together.

Um, some the toughest times is when you're in port, finally, after visiting for a while, and then you're in these fun places and exotic locations, but your family's not there to enjoy and share in that experience.

When she was young, his daughter, Langley, didn't understand why her dad couldn't be home.

As a kid, I didn't really know much about where my dad was going for work or what he was doing during the day, um, especially on deployments.

But now I do understand, um, also I'm really proud of my dad.

Um, I do remember one tradition that we did when I was a kid, and it was, um, looping these pieces of construction paper, um, every day that he was gone on deployment to show how long he's been gone and to know that we are caring for him, and we're ready for him to come back whenever.

Um, and he was really happy when he figured out we were doing that for him.

Military children are lucky to have dads that makeup such an important part of our society.

Knowing this helps them understand their parents and how the family can work to sustain strong bonds.

At the end of the day, they come together as one big happy family, even if they are miles apart or with each other home.

This is Vienna Ryan from Āliamanu Middle School for HIKI NŌ.

[sound of an ocean wave] That's really powerful.

Let's hear from HIKI NŌ mentor Christi Young about all of the behind the scenes work that went into that piece.

So, I was fortunate enough to be the mentor for Āliamanu Middle School for their, um, piece, More Than Just a Dad.

They actually had submitted an edited video for a HIKI NŌ challenge just before and the HIKI NO team saw it and really loved the direction they were going in but thought we could work a little bit to bring out more of the story.

And so, I actually started with the finished product, took a look at it, and then went back to the team of students with questions about what I wanted to know more about, that they had touched upon the story but really hadn't gone into in any, in depth.

And so we started from there and just a discussion about what do students find surprising when it comes to the lives of their fathers and mothers, and what could this story tell everyone about the life, especially of being a military child?

I was around five years old.

And when he came back, I'd be like, "Oh, hey, do I know you?"

The next step is actually, they gave me a script, which is, as a mentor and as an editor, it's always easier to work off a script because you can see the full picture from the reporter’s track to the interview subject's quotes.

And so we started from there, and I looked at just straight storyline, without emotion, are we telling the entire story from beginning to end?

Are we missing a piece of that?

Then after a few rounds of that script, then we went back to the video so we could hear it read and hear the emotion and see how the pieces fit together.

And then we did, I believe we did three or four edits of the video at that stage, uh, before we were ready to say we had all the pieces.

And the students were so, I give them so much credit for their dedication.

They redid their interviews for almost every piece in this story, which is not easy to do.

So, they went through a lot of work and kind of reinventing and rethinking their storyline as they went, and their passion and dedication for that really came through.

At the end of the day, they come together as one big happy family, even if they are miles apart or with each other home.

Working with the teachers is always a huge part of being a mentor.

You can't do it without the teacher.

And the teacher Āliamanu Middle School, Chris Facuri, was amazing.

He not only supported his students in every step and every decision they made, but he understood where I was trying to get them to go.

And so he was that key translator, I think, between the mentor and the student, because only the teacher also knows what other things the students have in their lives, that they have other classes, they have other responsibilities.

I kind of want to step back a little bit, and, you know, try and give them as much room as possible for their, you know, creativity to come out and for their voice to come up because ultimately it's their voice, uh, their opinions that matter.

Every story I work on, I find students who are unbelievably motivated, excited, inspired and dedicated.

Every story, I'm surprised by something.

I always learn something from a voice I've never heard before.

[sound of an ocean wave] Love can be expressed in so many different ways and everyone has their own love language.

The next piece by Mina Suzuki at H.P.

Baldwin High School on Maui is a thoughtful personal visual essay about just that.

I love you.

Three simple words.

Eight letters that can be conveyed in a multitude of languages, objects and emotions, something that seems forbidden to say since I had never heard it growing up in my Asian household, where showing what you actually feel is taboo.

For me, love was always conveyed in the forms of: Study hard, And go to college.

Ever since I started school as a little five-year-old, I thought I earned love through my accomplishments.

'Good job on your report card' was the closest phrase to the forbidden three words.

In order to feel loved, I became someone who lives off of what others think of me, always feeling the overwhelming desire to be number one, piling on extracurriculars until I'm about to break, building up for a resume for a college I'm not even too sure that I can handle.

There's always been a disconnection between me and people because of how I perceive love.

It feels as if I'm stuck behind a glass wall where I can see the people I hold close to my heart, yet I'm just an observer they won't notice until that glass cracks when I do something phenomenal.

I realized the extent of how I created the illusion that people loved me when I got a boyfriend.

He helped me to come to the terms that love doesn't come from what I do, but from people loving me for who I am.

My built-up qualms about saying the forbidden three words caused me to have trouble reciprocating them back whenever my boyfriend would say them.

As we continued dating, I began to see that it really wasn't such a sacred phrase that my family had painted it to seem.

Two years into our relationship, and he still teaches me things about love every day.

Love comes in many forms.

I'm slowly rebuilding my thoughts about what love is and how love works.

Yet, I know that through time and breaking out of my glass, I'll find my meaning of 'I love you.'

[slow piano chords] [sound of an ocean wave] Now let's go to the HIKI NŌ archives to watch a story from Highlands Intermediate School on O‘ahu about how a brother-sister bond has helped these siblings through the pandemic.

Sometimes you can't spend enough times with the ones you love.

During a normal school year, my younger brother, Teague, and I would have the same schedule and the same amount of free time after school.

But when classes went online due to COVID, our schedules and work habits were different, so it made it hard for us to find time to hang out with each other.

Our parents expect us to do our best, so homework is important.

Usually I would do mine right after school, but Teague would play and then do his at night whenever I was free.

I felt lonely.

Unlike some of my friends who don't have the best relationship with their brother or sister, Teague and I are really close.

He's my best friend.

Sometimes I would be watching TV and he'd come down to get a snack in the kitchen and ask, "What are you watching?"

I try to explain it to him.

I know he does understand because he makes a weird face, but at least he's listening, and that's what counts.

I took it upon myself to figure out a solution.

I noticed that if I get my work done earlier in the day, I’ll have more time after school to play with Teague.

This small change made a big difference.

I'm relieved because now I have someone I can talk freely with.

I feel like I can just be myself around him without thinking about what I have to say.

Spending time with my brother is important because time is precious, even in the middle of a pandemic.

[sound of an ocean wave] Bonds between best friends can be some of the strongest bonds in life, especially in high school.

Let's watch this HIKI NŌ archive story from Waianae High School about two best guy friends who define the term ‘bromance.’ Have you ever met knuckle and knuckle?

No, but you met Boom and Pow.

Meet Boom and Pow, or Chris and Jahren.

Chris is a linebacker, and Jahren's a lineman, and they do everything together.

I know they play football together.

They eat together.

They are what many people call ‘bromantically involved.’ They always like to spend time with each other and they always share food.

And that's the key to friendship, sharing food.

Key to a good, great friendship.

Close friendships between men have been a fact of life for centuries.

But the term bromance appears to be especially common today.

My brother and his best friend have a type of bromance.

My brother John and his friend Morris got a bromance.

Yeah, they're pretty close.

Yeah, I have two friends that are really close.

They're like, almost like brothers, which I think portrays, uh, bromance.

Men in a bromance have typically known each other for a very long time.

And they share immense love, respect and affection for each other.

My brother and his best friend basically do everything together.

They eat together, they go out together, they basically live together.

They might as well be joined at the hip.

Oh man, they're really close you know, like, whenever my brother goes to the store, Morris is always behind him, you know, like, they always, you know, go parties together, sleepovers.

You know.

Bromancing has become so common that even MTV made a TV series about it.

In my life I need to joke around.

I need to have like, a laughing moment in my life instead of being of serious and all that, and he comes here to do that.

Sometimes, that's not even enough.

My man crush is Taylor Lautner and why he is my man crush is because of the movie Twilight.

There's one guy named Zayn Malik.

Like, he has like, really nice hair.

Like, yeah, and he can sing really good.

I idolize Taemin from a Korean boy band.

Whether it's bromancing or man crushing, it's all about feeling a sense of brotherhood.

For Boom and Pow, it's hard to measure how much their friendship means to each other.

This much.

Not even this much.

This can’t even show how much.

See those people over there?

They have to come and help us out.

It's not just about being best friends anymore.

For Chris and Jahren, their bromance is something special, something to hold on to, where or how far they go.

True bros in a romance, they will always be.

[sound of an ocean wave] Don't forget another type of love: the passion we have for our hobbies.

This next student reflection from a student at Kapa‘a High School on Kaua‘i exemplifies that passion.

[sound of ocean waves] This is Emily Hartshorn, a junior at Kapa‘a High School on the Island of Kaua‘i.

I'm recording this in my room on January 22, 2022.

I picked up music when I was six years old, and about two years ago, I finally started writing my own songs.

I spend a lot of time in my room, and I mean, like, a lot.

Like, how has this person not gone completely insane?

A lot of time in my room, playing the same riffs over and over again, trying to glue them together in a way that can be considered music, while also trying to figure out how to say what I want to say without using the word ‘ah’.

Thank you, Led Zeppelin.

Until I finally give up and say, "Okay, that's good enough."

That's usually when I start with recording them.

There's a handful of my songs that are either finished or really close to being finished in the writing process that I've been working on recording for like, the last year and a half.

But none of them, as of right now, are 100% done.

Recording music can be really challenging and just full-on annoying sometimes.

There is so much just troubleshooting and adjusting involved in recording literally one song.

Other times microphones will be broken, my guitar won't stay in tune, the bass will sound clunky, or I just can't nail a drum part.

Along with the fun technical issues, I have also been playing with minor muscle and wrist issues.

It's usually just a problem of overuse, but none of it has been serious enough to stop me from playing for longer than a few days.

But obviously it's not helpful.

Okay, so at this point, you're probably wondering, well, if it's so hard, then why do you even do it anyways?

I love music, and I know that's very straight out of the book and very cliche, and saying it's cliche is cliche, but I love it so much.

I love playing it, listening to it, writing it, watching old videos of my favorite bands just like, killing it.

It's amazing.

And I love performing.

Whether it be by myself, or with fellow musicians, or with my very awesome and very fast band, Stonehenge.

I love it, all of it.

There have definitely been times when I wanted to give up entirely, but I always come back to it no matter what.

Countless hours of my life have been poured into the songs, and it is without a doubt time well spent.

One of the biggest reasons I continue to write and record music is because I want to get there.

I want to be like the bands that inspire me, and I want to do it big.

My major goal right now is to write, record, and release a full solid album that I can be proud of.

And I definitely still have a long way to go, but I know that it's absolutely within reach.

I also want to be able to inspire other people to really get into whatever they love doing, whether that be creating music, art, teaching, writing.

There's so many different things that I can’t even list right now.

But part of my mission is to inspire people to say, "Yeah, I can do this," and believe in themselves because heck yeah, you can.

Yeah!

Now, let's watch a visual essay from the heart.

It's from a student at H.P.

Baldwin High School on Maui who reflects on what she learned from growing up between two homes.

Being in two places at once always sounded cool as a kid.

I remember the two houses I grew up in, looking into the eyes of two parents, with nothing to worry about but the endless possibilities the world has to offer.

One high above into the mountains, and the other just above the surface.

The mountains became a little empty, as only one figure popped up.

"Where was mom?"

I thought.

My soul always resonated with the house above the surface because it was with my mom.

A car ride became dreadful as I learned I belong to more than one place.

Leaving the surface was difficult because I was leaving my friends behind just to be cooped up in a small, confined room, wishing to go out and play with someone my own age.

Noisy to quiet felt like the perfect equation to a happy life.

From playing football to countless sleepovers, my neighborhood could hardly keep up.

Ringing a doorbell to a friend's house just became silent as we all grew up.

Homework and dream-chasing kept me up most of the time, working hard to go off to college and pursue a new life where new expectations await.

We forgot what it feels like to be young again.

Growing up wasn't too bad, though.

All the crazy adventures to somewhere beyond our noisy neighborhood made it worth it.

As senior year creeps around the corner, I look back and think of all the memories that I will lay to rest as a new chapter of my life begins.

[sound of an ocean wave] During the COVID pandemic, one of the best ways you can show love to your community is by wearing a mask.

But are you wearing it properly to protect yourself and others?

Let's watch this explainer from our fellow students here at Pearl City High School.

For more than a year, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted people all across the world.

To help prevent this deadly spread we wear a mask, but not everyone wears them properly.

To wear your mask properly, start by grabbing a new mask with cleanly washed hands.

Using both hands, bring your mask up to your face and gently loop each strap over your ears.

You may also adjust the straps for comfort if needed to.

Then using two fingers carefully pinch the metal band against your nose.

Use your other hand to pull the bottom of the mask to your chin.

Ensuring that you wear your mask correctly protects both yourself and others around you.

Always keep in mind to social distance, wash your hands, and stay safe.

[sound of an ocean wave] Now let's watch the touching profile from the HIKI NŌ archives produced by Moanalua High School on O‘ahu.

It's a profile that exemplifies the true love and sacrifice it takes to take care of a beloved kupuna.

So what are you doing this weekend?

Relaxing?

Yeah, you, uncle.

What you doing this weekend?

Uh, I'm proud to say I work at Samurai Snacks ‘Aiea.

I just started, so it's about a month.

I love it.

It's my escape.

Iris Yafusco is great at customer service, but when she gets home, she gets to take care of her favorite customer.

Sometimes Aunty Iris is exhausted.

She has to take care of her mom, and there's so much involved in taking care of her mom.

Mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, uh, about four to five years ago.

I did run my own business.

Uh, we had a family business, Larry's Bakery.

Uh, I did close that down because of the situation.

It was just kind of rough on all of us.

I didn't work for a while.

And then, uh, my mom ended up going to daycare.

But I sometimes join her at Hale Hau‘oli Hawai‘i.

Senior Lifestyle ‘Ohana Fair.

There's a variety of stuff, yeah.

And I help by volunteering, so I'm out there promoting the program and talking on the radio sometimes.

She always tries to give back, like, she's trying to like, educate the public, people our age.

I think she's trying to educate us on how we can do it when our parents get like that.

As a caretaker you never get paid.

So, like everybody else in Hawai‘i, I have bills and my husband does work, but it's just not enough.

I said step back and go, you know, I got to do something.

Although Iris works two jobs, she doesn't let that get in the way of living her life to the fullest.

That's just, that's just her.

She, she can talk to the wall, and make friends with the wall, or, you know, she can make friends with anybody.

Once she enters a room, she's like the life of the party, you know.

To me, she's always happy and she always is upbeat, no matter what she's going through.

She could have only three hours of sleep, but she still comes into work very happy and energetic.

I always think of it as, you know, live every day to the fullest and enjoy it.

Try not to get so upset about it because there's nothing I can do.

It's the disease that makes her that way.

Um, cherish what I have with her because I don't know how much longer I have with her.

My mom is my everything.

She’s gold.

Working hard for her mother is all worth it for Iris, knowing that the time she has with her is priceless.

This is Mari Kimoto from Moanalua High School for HIKI NŌ.

[sound of an ocean wave] Thank you for watching this special Valentine's Day episode of HIKI NŌ.

We hope you've enjoyed the work of Hawai‘i's New Wave of Storytellers as much as we've enjoyed sharing it with you.

Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on Instagram and TikTok.

You'll see some bonus behind the scenes content and keep up to date with the latest and best stories from Hawai‘i youth.

That's it for our show.

We'll see you next week for more proof that Hawai‘i students HIKI NŌ, can do!

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