Kenoi has been the mayor of Hilo since ? and in a majority of his speeches and interactions, he speaks HCE. One example is the Mayor of Hilo, Billy Kenoi. However, there are multiple successful individuals who embrace HCE and use it in their professional lives. Even today, students in Hawai‘i’s education system will inevitably come across the attitude that it is not fine to speak HCE and those who wish to excel must speak SE. HCE is unique to the culture of Hawai‘i much like Patois is to Jamaica, therefore, to “teach” it out of children is to remove that sense of belonging and culture that ties them to their ancestors and history. Many local authors give examples of how they were discouraged from speaking HCE: teachers would admonish the use of it in class and shame the students that spoke it. The richness of pidgin is perpetuated by a few brave souls unabashedly willing to share their culture with the world. According to local pastor Earl Morihara, “So who we are, all that we tink and do on dis island, all dat stuff that make Hawaiian culture is kinda captured in the language' (Pidgin 2009). Instead of trying to eliminate a language that descends from a unique historic, cultural amalgamation, we should celebrate and embrace it. The language they were told to lose is the same language that made them successful because it captured the essence of living in Hawai‘i.

However, as these writers developed their writing style, what made them unique in the world of literature was that they used pidgin that accurately represents local Hawai‘i culture. In multiple literary sources, local Hawai‘i authors describe how, as children, they learned that HCE, the language they grew up with was improper and if they wanted to succeed in life, they needed to learn SE fluently (Takahama 1996 Tonouchi 32). As a local myself, I remember being chastised for speaking pidgin, especially from my mother who is a teacher. Since the 1940s, there has been a significant push to minimalize, if not entirely erase, the use of HCE from the vocabulary of locals by banning it from educational classrooms (Standwood 59).

Lee tonouchi