Because I Am Aged

Moriso Teraoka

I feel flattered and honored to be asked by you on how I get my story ideas. I am a non-fiction writer. I love to write and have been writing articles and stories since I enrolled in KCC back in 1985, after retiring from Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard. Starting in 1990, I became a journalist for our school paper, Kapio, until about year 2000. News writing is objective, presenting the pros and cons of a story and many commentaries. I loved new writing. As I continued with my writing, I became a student of Lisa Kanae, Dennis Kawaharada, Judy Kirkpatrick, Ann Inoshita and Gail Harada.

Because I am aged, I have much more memories than other students in the school that I can use as my story ideas. My small kid memories, my WWII experience, My Pearl Harbor working days have been very helpful with story ideas. I was a student of Lois-Ann Yamanaka for about one year. My writing Bible is a book called On Writing Well by William Zinsser.

Moriso Teraoka was born in 1924 in the plantation town of Wainaku, on the island of Hawaii. In 1943 Teraoka walked to Hilo and volunteered to join the newly created 442nd Regimental Combat Team which was sent to Camp Shelby, Mississippi for basic training. After the war, he began his 38 year career at Pearl Harbor Naval Base as an apprentice machinist, ending it as Nuclear Ship Superintendent. In his retirement years he took culinary and creative writing classes and over the course of 20 years designed and created a cactus and succulent garden at the Kapiolani Community College. More photographs and an extensive history of Teraoka can be found at?http://memory.hawaii.edu/page/moriso.html.