Laupahoehoe is a leaf-shaped point extending from the eastern shore of the Big Island of Hawaii. Its level ground makes it an attractive one for buildings, and on April 1, 1946, those buildings included a white church with a tall steeple, a sugar mill, a small school (its four teachers, all from the mainland, lived in cottages on the beachfront), some stores, and homes. The highway to Hilo, 27 miles to the south, ran along sea cliffs just behind the cane fields of Laupahoehoe.

On the morning of that April 1, 1946, people were going about their ordinary morning business. Lucy Akiano, a Latter-day Saint woman of 49, had gone to the school to get its kitchen work underway. Her husband John was on the highway up on the high ground, waiting to catch the bus to Hilo and his day’s work. The schoolteachers were all still in their cottages, dressing. A number of children, including some of Lucy’s grandchildren, were playing outside, ready for school but not about to go into the building before they had to.

From the kitchen, Lucy heard a change in the sounds of the children’s playing. They were calling to each other about the strange thing going on at the beach – the water had all pulled away from shore, leaving behind unfamiliar sea creatures lying on the sand. The children began running to the oddly empty beach.

Lucy listened to their calls, then froze momentarily, then dashed out the door screaming to the children to run to higher ground. Some obeyed, some didn’t. She grabbed the hand of her grandson Billy and dragged him toward high ground and the home of the Malani family. Then she turned back toward the beach hoping to save someone else as the first great wave of what would be a three-wave tsunami crashed onto Laupahoehoe.

The school collapsed under the wave. Two of the teachers’ cottages were washed inland; two were swept to sea. Lucy could hear screaming from a nearby, half-submerged house. She would not know it until much later, but Daniel, her 15-year-old grandson, was killed as the house he was in collapsed under the wave.

As the wave returned to the sea, it carried Lucy, and many others, with it. Lucy clung to a narrow board as she was dragged far out from land. That board became her precarious life raft, and she hugged it all that long day and into the evening, when a door floated near her; with great difficulty, Lucy climbed on top of the door.

In the fading light, Lucy examined her bruised body and her gashed and bleeding right foot. She was cold, but – in answer to her prayer, she always felt – a pocket of warm air surrounded her. Exhausted, she fell asleep.

All during that long, horror-filled day, the people of Laupahoehoe had tried to rescue their friends and family members whom they could see struggling far out in the water. There were no boats – all had been destroyed or washed away by the tsunami. Finally someone found a boat, not intended for use in the sea but merely in a pond on the island. Carpenters worked to rebuild that pondboat’s stern so that they could attach to it the only motor they had salvaged from the wreckage. John and Lucy Akiano’s children took their father inland, as a safety precaution – they were afraid the frantic man would attempt to swim after Lucy.

Eventually, Navy planes flew overhead, looking for survivors in the water. They saw one piece of wreckage with four people clinging to it, and dropped a rubber lifeboat to them. They did not see Lucy Akiano.

When the plantation whistles sounded at 5 o’clock the next morning, they woke Lucy, still on her floating door. She faced new terrors that morning. The fin of a passing shark pierced the door upon which she rode. Another shark tentatively bit at the edge of the door, catching a piece of her clothing in its teeth. Then it let go, and Lucy watched the school of sharks swim past.

There was no sign of rescue. All she could see was debris in the water. When a stick floated near enough for her to grab it, she pulled it aboard, then tore off part of her skirt and tied it to the stick, ready to wave as a flag should rescuers come near.

That morning, she heard a plane overhead. She tried to catch its attention, but it flew on toward Hilo, that town devastated by the tsunami as thoroughly as Laupahoehoe had been. But a little later, when another plane began to circle her, Lucy knew she had been seen. That plane circled and circled, as a sign to a nearby Navy boat that there was a survivor in the water, but the men on the Navy boat failed to see her.

Still later, men aboard another small boat did see her, but could not approach due to the wreckage which surrounded her. As she had been doing ever since she had been dragged into the sea, Lucy prayed … and watched the debris float away and felt her door drifting toward the rescuers.

She was too weak to tie herself to the rope that a sailor threw to her. She caught the life preserver they threw to her, though, and managed to hang on. Sailors tried to pull her aboard, but she was too exhausted to help them. Then one sailor dived into the water and took hold of her. A large wave surged under the pair, lifting them high enough for rescuers on the boat to grasp her arms and pull her aboard.

Lucy had swallowed so much seawater during the rescue that the sailors performed artificial respiration and watched as the water poured from her. They applied iodine to her cuts – cuts so numerous that the first aid was extremely painful. They wrapped her in warm blankets, and gave her a sedative, and Lucy slept as they carried her to the hospital at Hilo. It would be a month before she was strong enough to walk again.

The tsunami of 1946, originating far away in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, claimed the lives of 159 people in Hawaii. At Laupahoehoe, three of the schoolteachers drowned; one was rescued. Twenty-one children, some of whom had run to the school and others of whom had been caught on the empty beach, died that morning. The people of Laupahoehoe built a memorial to their townsmen who died that day; Lucy Akiano’s grandson Daniel heads the list.

In large part due to the loss of life that day, the United States established the Seismic SeaWave Warning System (now the Pacific Tsunami Warning System), using underwater buoys and seismic-detection equipment to identify potential killer waves in time to evacuate coastal areas in times of danger.