The man who gets most of the props for keeping the Hawaiian language from dying.

Oh, Larry Kimura.

Didn't grow up speaking Hawaiian. Larry Kimura grew up speaking English,

even though his dad was from Japan and his mom was native Hawaiian.

Both of my parents never used their first language with us, their children, except.

Larry told me growing up, he felt this push, this immense pressure, all around him to forget

his culture. But even as a little kid, he was pushing back. He's in his 70s now and he was

telling me about a conversation he was having with his younger brother. He said, we used to go and

watch the cowboy and Indian shows at our local theater and you would be cheering for the Indians.

And I said, yes, and I remember when we played cowboy and Indian, I always wanted to be the Indian.

You were just always drawn to the more indigenous side of you.

Yes, yes. It was kind of weird to me to think that Hawaiian was so ignored because that was part

of who we are. We, I am. And we, meaning my family. I knew, of course as I grew up, Japan was

very Japanese and this place, Hawaii was not very Hawaiian.

I'm Shireen Marisol Maraji. I'm Jean Zembe and this is Code Switch. From NPR.

All right, Charles, so it's still winter. We are all collectively still grappling with this

pandemic. But back when I was open, where we could still travel for work way back in the spring of 2019,

Shireen Yu and our colleague, our coach, which producer, Kamari Dave Rajan and our editor,

Lea Dinella took a trip to Hawaii. Yes, we did. And it was one of the most memorable reporting

experiences of my life. I'm not going to hate to vocally here, but I'm here.

And it wasn't memorable just because Hawaii, yes, is one of the most beautiful places in the world.

But because we were there to tell a really good story, a story about a man whose voice you just heard,

...