Carlyn Leinani Tani
Carlyn Leinani Tani is a veteran of media and communications, with a wide-ranging background in video, print, and multimedia. She’s produced several nationally televised PBS documentaries and received multiple honors from the International Association of Business Communicators – Hawai‘i. A graduate of Pomona College in California, Carlyn Leinani earned an MFA and later, an MBA from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. She currently writes for various publications in Hawai‘i and enjoys gardening in her spare time.
Updated August 2022
Stories from This Author
The Spirit of Shinobu - Part 2
Aug. 19, 2022 • Carlyn Leinani Tani
Read Part 1 >> Sally’s earliest memories are of playing with Bernice and Beatrice Wong in back of the grocery store their parents owned. But the girls’ friendship was undermined by the prevailing cultural norms at school. “Because this was during a time when the Chinese would stay with the Chinese, the Japanese with the Japanese in school, and you didn’t integrate,” Sally recalls. “It was terrible.” It was worse for her older sister, Elizabeth, whom classmates taunted for being deaf. …
The Spirit of Shinobu - Part 1
Aug. 18, 2022 • Carlyn Leinani Tani
The life, hardships and resilience of the Tani family As evening fell on July 18, 1926, a Dodge touring car packed with the nine-member Tani family came barreling down the road to Kahului. Mitsuzo, the patriarch, sat in the front passenger seat with his three-year-old daughter Yachiyo tucked beside him. Seven other family members filled the back seat, including Fusae, 11. The family was returning home from a Sunday outing to Pā‘ia Camp, where the children played while the men …
