Talking story with Bruce Hiraoka

Bruce Hiraoka found his calling relatively early in life. He was 21 years old and he had just finished an auto mechanics program at Hilo Community College when a friend of the family died in a gruesome car accident.

The funeral changed his life.

”He ended up in the back of the car and he was all busted up. But when my mother and I went to the funeral, it was an open casket, and it seemed like nothing was wrong with him. So I guess it’s a blessing that I told my mom, I kinda want to do this.”

Hiraoka was so fascinated with the postmortem reconstructive work done on his friend’s body that he started talking to the embalmer after the service was over. He went back to the funeral home the next day and spoke with the owner, who, apparently impressed with the young man’s enthusiasm, offered him a job on the spot.

Did you get grossed out at first?

I did, at one time. We went to make a removal in Hilo and had all his whole family members who was upstairs at his house. They didn’t tell me how to make a removal. So back in the day, just no gloves, nothing.

So I stuck my hand underneath the guy’s okole butt, and took his back, and I feel something on my hand. And $#!%.

He pulled his hand out from under the dead body and saw it covered in feces. Hiraoka explained that people often “purge” when they pass away, emptying all the bodily fluids held in by contracted muscles. He started dry-heaving in front of the whole family and had to run outside to catch his breath.

That was a killa. So I wash my hand, and whatever. Everybody laughing. I wash my hands, come back inside, grab the guy, whatever, put him inside the gurney. And now he get the shi shi bag, yeah? Oh, that thing had broke apart. Aw, that thing was rotten. Well, there I go again.

Dry heave, gagging. Go outside, stay out there a little while, only crying. I stay crying. I come back inside and everybody — like you — laughing. But you know what? Back in the day, nobody tell me nothing. But from that time on, never ever did I stuck my hand under the okole. But I tell everybody now — all my apprentices, all my removal guys and stuff — don’t ever stick your hand underneath that okole because, man, you guys gonna gurp. If I gonna gurp, you guys gonna gurp.

Hiraoka came to Kauai in 1984. He had just finished mortuary school in San Francisco and got a job at Garden Island Mortuary. Then 22 years old, Hiraoka arrived on the island with no friends, no family and no place to live.

He took up residence in a small room behind the funeral home where he still sleeps sometimes, like on Thursday night, when he had to pick up a body at 11 p.m. A mortician is always on call.

How do you get the bodies ready for the funeral?

First, you lift up arteries — the femoral artery, which is by the leg. You dig for ‘em, you’re gonna lift ‘em, put the injection needle inside from where that machine is.

He pointed across the embalming room to a contraption that looked like a mad scientist’s microwave, except it had rubber tubes running out of it.

This machine here, there’s a needle. You put ‘em inside his arteries. Then you turn on this machine. This acts like your heart. It pushes out the blood so it comes out through a vein in your neck — your jugular vein.

So that machine pushes all the blood out of one artery, and replaces it with embalming fluid?

Yes, which is formaldehyde.

He lifted a lid on top of the machine to show me a reservoir of glassy brown liquid. It smelled like my high school science classroom the day we had to dissect a pig fetus.

Oh, that’s what the smell is.

Yep, formaldehyde — the number one drug in ice.

Funeral homes have to be very careful about locking their doors because the embalming fluid can be used to synthesize methamphetamine.

Did this place ever got ripped off?

No, no. Not so far.

He knocked on a block of wood that sat on a nearby table, propping up the head of his next customer, who lay quietly under a white sheet waiting patiently for his or her turn.

So you pump out all the blood, and what happens next?

Then you set all the features. So you set like the face. You make ‘em smile a little bit. Because what it (embalming fluid) does is firm everything up, yeah? You do it while it’s going through.

That’s kind of artistic work, isn’t it?

Embalming is a art and science too. So it’s very important that the person who has passed away looks comfortable and good, and that the family is all good. That’s who you wanna take care is the family. ‘Cause once they know that he or she is good, they’re good. That’s how you get repeat customers.

One of Hiraoka’s early repeat customers was a young woman Hiraoka would eventually marry. A couple months after he arrived on the island, a man died and Hiraoka hit it off with his niece during the funeral service.

The girl’s parents wanted him to take her out on a date, but he didn’t have any money. A few months later, the young woman’s mother passed away, and she returned to the funeral home. They married two years later and today have three sons.

Was it hard to learn how to set all the features and do the embalming?

Well, back in the day, yeah, but now it’s just automatic.

What if they have lacerations or bruises?

Yeah, so after that, once you embalm ‘em and then you get all these lacerations and stuff. Then, after that you do something else to sew it back up. And then what you gonna do is you cover ‘em up, yeah? That’s when you gonna take long time, cause that’s when you gonna make ‘em as lifelike as possible.

So nowadays, Shiseido, Lancome, the whole nine yards from Macy’s. We don’t use the mortuary kind of makeup cause it looks like a clown, or would cake, and it used to crack. It used to look white and disgusting. But now, they look like they just sleeping.

What’s the longest you ever spent on a body?

When I first started, there was this boy. I forgot his name, but they were swimming down at Kilauea slippery slides, and they didn’t find him for like three days. So like all the prawns and stuff like that had eaten his eyes, nose, ears, his lips. So what I did was — for like three days, four days, with a picture on the side — rebuild his whole face back up.

So when they found him, the brother and the father told the mother, “don’t go and see him.” But when they came in to the mortuary, after I got done, the mom said, “I don’t know why you guys not tell me for not look at him. It look like he nothing wrong.” But…

But you never told her what went on, huh? Morticians probably have a lot of secrets.

Plenty. That’s why there’s two people in this world that you don’t screw with. One is your accountant. And the other one is your mortician. Believe me. Believe.

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Caleb Loehrer, staff writer, can be reached at 245-0441 or cloehrer@thegardenisland.com.