SOLDIER- HIGH-SCALER - DIVER - ADVENTURER. A MODEST CITIZEN OF HAWAII.
Bill Adams called Oahu home his entire adult life. His successful scramble up the cliff at Haiku, while heroic and dangerous, became just one incident in a life filled with adventure.
All the material in this gallery furnished by Reid & Geri Adams - Bill's son and daughter in law.
BILL ADAMS' PARENTS AND SISTERSBack: Margaret Cornwell Adams and Bert Adams.Front: Maxine Adams Petitt, Babe Adams Bendure and Bill Adams.Photographed in the early 1920s.
Bill with his two sisters Maxine and Babe.Girard, Pennsylvania.
Bill Adams - age 19 - standing front and center. . . . The Girard company manufactured toys.
Bill Adams stationed at Fort Kamehameha - 1939 to 1941. He returned to Gerard PA for his army discharge. He earned his way back to Oahu by working as a high-scaler at Boulder dam.
Bill returned to Oahu and married Lydia Takahashi-Wesley on February 1, 1942 at Kalihi Union Church.
ADULTS - LEFT TO RIGHT:
Doris Arita, The two Choo sisters, Lydia Takahashi-Wesley, Bill Adams, Louis Otto, The presiding Pastor and Paul Nobriga.
L OCATION: The grounds of the Sussanah Wesley Home for Women where Lydia was raised...... Lydia's Japanese ancestery led to Bill being denied employment at Pearl Harbor. He determined to stay on Oahu and obtained work on the Red Hill Tunnel.
Ray Cotherman learned of Bill's high-scaler experience and hired him to climb at Haiku. This dinner party celebrates the successful conclusion of the job. At the left, Lydia Adams - - The sailor in back is Richard Cornwell, Bill's cousin - - Next right is Art Delay an Engineer then Bill Adams and Art Delay's wife.
Lydia remembers that during the three weeks Bill and Louis worked their way up Haiku cliff he came home from work every day saturated with mud.
After his successful climb The navy hired him as a diver/rigger at Pearl Harbor..
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Bill Adams and Jason Costa were awarded letters of commendation from the Commandment, 14th Naval District and Commanding General Headquarters Central Pacific Bases Command in 1945 for repairing a submarine cable that stretched across Honolulu harbor.
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