Henry Wells Lawrence, computer teacher at Punahou High School 1970s
Ronald Loui
Ronald Loui
Ronald Loui
Published Jun 7, 2026
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Tonight I remember my -- our -- high school math teacher who let us play with the computer after school. Computer Lab was his homeroom. Computer Club was his overtime. I am sure AOL-founder Case and ebay-founder Omidyar remember this well.

First, I should say all of our math teachers had an impact on a nerd like me. From Chris McLachlin (Stanford men's and UH women's volleyball legend) who would not let me leave until i showed 7x8 and 7x9 were memorized properly in 4th grade. And gave us play time with soma cubes. To Mr. Eldredge who instilled a love of sports analytics and Mr. Pels who gave us a concern for the environment when we engineer. On my scotch-tape-released-module with ballast at the bottom of the aquarium, Mr. Pels asked with deceptively understated influence: "so you're just leaving that part there?"

Henry Wells Lawrence was a celebrity among students because we all knew he was one of the pilots who made it into the air during the Attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec 7, 1941.

Of course he never mentioned it, didn't talk about it. We found out about it from other teachers. He was more interested in chess-playing programs in 1977. He let us touch the book he was reading quietly behind the desk while we clacked on the teletypes.

Oh yes, many of the scenes you see in the multiple movies that recreate the attack were scenes from Mr. Lawrence's lived experience.

It mattered immensely to us in Honolulu, even 36 years later. Like saying you were NYFD at 9/11. It mattered.

And before you worry too much about it, our absolute top computer nerd those days was a Japanese-American kid who went to CalTech (so did his brother!). Nobody wants to do and feel what they do and feel in a war, and are often happy to get back to normal. Mr. Lawrence was no exception there. Elton I. was probably his favorite computer output.

So the scenes? Yes. Henry Wells Lawrence was a young officer with a young bride when bullets came through the wall. His pistol was requested by a sergeant near the hangars, who proceeded to unload rounds into the sky. Lawrence's own airplane was taken, famously, by a mechanic training to be a pilot, and flown into dogfights off Kaneohe Bay. Gordon Sterling, Jr. was the only air-to-air US fatality that day, in Mr. Lawrence's plane, taken into the sky while Lawrence was trying to get keys to open the locked ammo storage. Lawrence gets in the air an hour later, seeing no bogey no bandit, but had there been a third wave, his wing guns would have burned hot. His squadron leader that day was later a big ace in the European theater. He flew with the famous names: Welch, Taylor, Brown, Rasmussen, Sanders, Thacker. Next time you watch a movie about Pearl Harbor, compare the US Navy report where Lawrence is quoted. Feel more for the real pilots than the actors can deliver.

There's a bit more. After flying P-36s and/or P-40s that morning, and never encountering the enemy, he later led a land-based P-38 squadron in the Pacific. Another TV Series recreated this experience with another famous actor. One pilot shot down a plane transporting the IJN Admiral who planned the Pearl Harbor attack; he was head of the squadron. They sent him home so he wouldn't become a trophy target for the rest of the war. Mr. Lawrence inherited that plane and that command. I only learned this by searching the USAAF records much later.

So he was a war hero. I like to say heroes are made when generals make mistakes. And generals who don't make mistakes don't need heroes. Mr. Lawrence probably gave us that idea with his own attitude. He might have even felt he was a failure.

We are his chosen legacy. He didn't choose to be in the skies in WW2. He chose to educate a generation in computing. He was a Yale man (he sent his son to Yale too, and that fella became a tree-scientist at a college in Erie, PA).

Lots of people with a similar name can be found on the Pearl Harbor lists of casualties, a few even on the marble wall of the USS Arizona Memorial. It's not a unique thing to have given if you had been there.

I didn't finish my list of influential math teachers at Punahou. Mr. Buck actually had the earliest HP "computer", a 9100-A, in his homeroom. He taught us probability and stats well. Mrs. Cox of course was my homeroom teacher, math team advisor, and the Radcliffe woman who got me in. Back then, if you were the wife of a professor at UH, you used your smarts to bring up the next generation right. Mr. Price, the ex-navy seal, had a fascination with the decimal digits of e and discrete difference methods. He taught me to lift weights, actually, which is not a bad thing to help a nerd do, so he can grow into the world without so much social awkwardness and resulting social resentment. Mr. Bowers, the army artillery colonel, was the legend who got us perfect scores on the Calc AP exam.

All good people. So many good people we owe our formation to. But in terms of getting a headstart in computing, no one close to Mr. Lawrence, our reluctant war hero who really would have been happy just to play chess against a computer some day. I heard he lived long enough he probably did.