Courtesy of WOWSA, Huntington Beach, California.
In the military[edit]
General Samuel C. Armstrong led a rifle company that repelled Pickett’s Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg, and led U.S. Colored Troops.
Captain Francis Wai (’35) was awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor, Killed in Action in the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
Colonel Farrant Turner (’13), Major Alex McKenzie (’29), and Major John Johnson (’31) commanded the Nisei 100th Infantry Battalion, a.k.a. the “Purple Heart Battalion.” Johnson was Killed in Action at the Battle of Monte Cassino. The destroyer USS Chung-Hoon is named after Punahou football star, Admiral Gordon Chung-Hoon (’29*), who survived the attack on the USS Arizona (BB-39).
Many of the students were children of high level commanders, e.g., a Marine Commandant Wallace M. Greene, Jr., stationed in the Pacific, and many had their family reassigned before graduation. This includes Lt. General Edward W. Timberlake (’14*) (see Patrick W. Timberlake; all three brothers were Generals), Colonel Red Reeder (’20*), Lt. General Donald Prentice Booth (’22*), and Brig. General Walter M. Johnson ‘(22*), all of whom graduated from West Point, and all of whom had important World War II commands.
The school can claim at least thirteen Army Generals, four Admirals, a Marine Major General, and six Air Force Generals.[64] Three-Star General Stanley Larsen (’33) was the first commander of the Field Force, Vietnam and commander of the Sixth United States Army.[65] Marine Major General Ross T. Dwyer (’37) was commander of the 1st Marine Division and Army Three-Star General George Cantlay (’38) was commander of the 2nd Armored Division. Donald Booth was commander of the Fourth United States Army. Brigadier General C. B. Stewart (’30) was a Ph.D. in nuclear physics.[66] Admiral Alma Lau (Grocki) (’77), a member of the 2nd Naval Academy class to admit women, is the most recent to join this list.
Barack Obama (’79) is the 44th President of the United States. He attended Punahou from 5th grade until graduation.
Punahou has produced many leaders in the government of Hawaii. Sanford Dole (1864) was President of the brief Republic of Hawaii, then Governor of Hawaii. Walter Frear (1881) and Lawrence M. Judd (1905) were also Governors.
Lt. Governor Brian Schatz (’90) was appointed U.S. Senator D-Hawaii to complete Daniel Inouye’s final term. U.S. Senator R-Connecticut Hiram Bingham III (1892) was also elected Governor of Connecticut. Otis Pike (’39*), Democratic Congressman from New York, chaired the Pike Committee investigating Richard Nixon. Republican Charles Djou (’88) recently finished Neil Abercrombie’s term as Democratic Congressman from Hawaii. After serving in Congress, Djou was deployed as an Army Reserve Major to Afghanistan. At least three other graduates from Punahou have represented Hawaii in the U.S. House.
Judge Elbert Tuttle (1914) was appointed by President Dwight Eisenhower to lead the federal court that desegregated the South (the Fifth Circuit Four). HEW Secretary John W. Gardner (’29*) was President Lyndon Johnson’s architect of the Great Society. Tuttle and Gardner were awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Sun Yat-Sen, the Founding Father of the Republic of China (esteemed by Taiwan as well as pre- and post-communist mainland China), attended Punahou (Oahu College) for a semester of study after graduating from Iolani School.
With Presidents of the Republic of China, the Republic of Hawaii, and the United States of America, Punahou can claim three heads of state.
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