When John William Kaikainahaole heard of the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, he rushed to the base where he worked in the paint shop to see what he could do to help.

His family and friends didn't know where he was for the next three days.

"He was picking up body parts," his daughter Leialoha Holmquist said Saturday from Laguna Woods, Calif. "Dad never really got over it. He wouldn't talk about it. Mom told us about it later."

Her father wanted to enlist to fight in the war right away, Holmquist said. But he was assigned to the map room at Pearl Harbor, helping produce maps for the Pacific Theater campaign and was told his work was vital to the war effort and he couldn't be spared. While working for the Navy he became good friends with Fleet Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, his daughter said.

Kaikainahaole, 87, who died March 30, in Huntington Beach, Calif., was born in Palama in 1921 to a family of 14 children. He dropped out of school to help support his family during the Depression.

He married Dora, his wife of 62 years, in Honolulu in 1946. Kaikainahaole worked for the Navy for 30 years, and was stationed in the San Francisco Bay Area at Oakland and Treasure Island Naval Station in San Francisco before retiring in 1974.

He and Dora, also a Honolulu native, retired to Kahalu'u, living there until 1993, when they moved to Huntington Beach to be near their children.

Besides his wife, Dora, and daughter Leialoha, Kaikainahaole is survived by his brother, Gilbert; daughter, Penny Frost; son, John William IV; granddaughter, Kaiulani Holmquist; and grandson, Theodore Kaikainahaole Holmquist. Burial arrangements in Honolulu are pending.