Hawai'i became the 50th state in 1959, the year I graduated from Saint Louis High School.

I was the manager of the baseball team under coach Francis Funai. We won the ILH championship with players like Tommy Lee, Mike Hong, Bob "Feller" Herodias, Mike Yanagida, Joe Manaba, Bob Matsumoto, Tom Gray, Mousey Murakami and Ed Hayashi.

We lost to Baldwin, led by Glen Oura, in the state championship at Honolulu Stadium and that was sad, but 1959 was a glad time because Hawai'i became the 50th state.

I remember seeing my Uncle Albert "Yunny" Kam in a statehood celebration crowd photo in a library book. He worked in my parents' hog slaughterhouse in Waipahu.

He had a pig farm and had his two-story pig roasting place next to our slaughterhouse. He made 'ono tasty char siu and roast pork! I remember going with him to the 'Ewa plantation camps to sell his food to plantation workers.

My mom, Thelma Kam, sold my Uncle Albert's pork and char siu in her one-woman grocery store on Waipahu Street.

I was fascinated by Uncle Albert's pig roasting process and watched him rub the brown hoisin sauce into the carcass for roast pork and the red sauce for char siu. Then he lowered the hooked carcass and pork butt into the oven to be slowly cooked by a kiawe wood fire.

My father, Francis Kam, had his chicken coop next to Uncle Albert's pig pen. He fed the birds leftover Navy food from Pearl Harbor and that's how we got eggs and chicken meat.

He also grew his own vegetables next to our two-story, old, scary home. The bottom part was a warehouse where rice was stored from my grandparents' farm.

Next door were Japanese neighbors who had vegetable farms. One of the neighbor families were the Minagawas and I used to walk to August Ahrens school with Michael and Mae Minagawa. Once, Mrs. Minagawa invited me to dinner and they had fried bullfrog legs!

It was around 1959 when my parents had to move and the Wai Lani subdivision of Waipahu was created.

It was tough to give up my childhood Waipahu country days. I always walked barefoot and never combed my hair.

Weekly through August, we will feature reflections by local writers and readers about statehood and the 50 years since Hawai'i was admitted into the union.