Born: 1915, United States
Died: 2015
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Katherine Ah Lan
The following is republished from the National Park Service and was written by Faith Bennett. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
Katherine Lowe was born Katherine Ah Lan in Iwilei, Hawai‘i in 1915 to Mary Kailipala Chong and Ching Tong Chong, who raised her in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 1931 she married David Kamakaikolia Kauhi with whom she had two sons, David and Joseph. By 1939, the pair had separated and Katherine Ah Lan married her second husband, George Kaina Lowe. In 1941 when she received the tragic news that her son Joseph died as a result of an accident at the home of his babysitter, Lowe was working as a trimmer at the Dole Pineapple Cannery. The Dole company, founded by a descendant of Anglo Christian missionaries to Hawai‘i, was one of the powerful US companies whose commercial and political interests dominated the islands.
On December 7, 1941 Lowe and her family were preparing to go to church when her then six-year-old son, David, told her “we’re at war.” Since they were already dressed, she said they would go to church anyway. “We didn’t know it was an attack,” she recalled. That evening, however, she remembered covering the windows of the house in fear that Japanese bombers would see their lights and target them. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Lowe and her best friend Elizabeth Moku, as well as several other employees from the Dole Pineapple Cannery, applied for civilian jobs at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, the very site of the deadly attack. The women worked in the storage area of the shipyard where they transported materials and learned how to handle fire hoses because of the area’s vulnerability to fire. The women carried oil drums and heavy equipment: “we were rugged,” Lowe remembered.
In 1944, Lowe and her husband George moved to Okinawa, Japan, where he served as marine superintendent for twenty-two years before moving the family back to Honolulu in 1968 upon his retirement. Katherine Lowe went on to have a total of 8 children and lived to see 52 grandchildren, 137 great-grandchildren, 115 great-great-grandchildren, and even 20 great-great-great-grandchildren. She was an avid bowler and hula dancer into her nineties. At the age of ninety-six she proudly told the NBC reporters who visited her home that she was still bowling a 145 average, and she offered to dance a hula for her guests. In August 2015, Lowe celebrated her one hundredth birthday at a large party surrounded by friends and family. In what her friend Siana Burgess described as an “Aloha moment,” Lowe joined in on the hula meant to honor her at the party. She died a few months later, in November.