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Roy Sakuma is an incredibly warm-hearted and gracious man. I was honored to meet him and am thankful for his willingness to share his story with me for the AMHD News.

Roy Sakuma

Roy Sakuma on family and mental illness
Lance Agena, Editor, AMHD News

Roy’s rise from a high school dropout to becoming the most renowned ‘ukulele instructor in Hawai‘i is well known among many locals. However, not until recently has Roy shared the personal details behind his early childhood and adolescent years of skipping school and causing neighborhood mischief. According to Roy, behind his rascal behavior as a boy was pain and loneliness because of something he had never spoken of before: mental illness in his family.

A few months ago, PBS Hawai‘i president and CEO Leslie Wilcox asked Roy to sit down with her on her show “Long Story Short” to talk about the ‘ukulele. To her surprise, when she asked Roy about his childhood, he opened up to reveal that his mother and brother lived with schizophrenia. 

Roy told Wilcox that during his childhood, there was no meaningful communication from his mother because of her illness. At age 11, he hardly slept because he was afraid of being stabbed in his sleep by his older brother, who had once attacked Roy with a knife. To cope with a mother and brother who would constantly talk to themselves, Roy said he escaped in his mind by going into “dreamland.” For Roy, that period of his life was extremely confusing and painful to deal with.

During the interview, Wilcox asked Roy what he would say to people dealing with mental illness. “I would say that if in your darkest moments you can see something positive … there’s hope,” he said. “As long as you have hope, then you have the first step of helping yourself get better.”

The AMHD News met with Roy Sakuma at his Kane‘ohe ‘ukulele studio to glean more of his insights in dealing with loved ones with a mental illness. At the time, it had been a month since the program aired and the ‘Ukulele Festival and the summer concert series had just completed. In that time, Roy received a flood of appreciation through letters and people coming up to him after his concerts. “Some friends just called me and they had tears in their eyes and others said that it hit home because they have a family member who is mentally ill,” said Roy. “A lot of people will just come up to me and they’ll extend their hands and want to shake my hand or they’ll want to give me a hug and just say, ‘Thank you for sharing.’”

This feedback was a surprise for him, especially since he had not planned on talking about his family’s mental illness during the television interview. According to Roy, everything about his childhood just flowed out because he tried to “speak from the heart.” “We need to be more open to these things, to not let somebody’s illness be in the way of understanding the person,” he said. “Learn more about mental illness so that you can understand your family member, and if it’s affecting you, one of the options is to seek help, seek advice for yourself.”

Throughout his adolescence, Roy constantly worried about his own mental health. In addition to Roy’s family members, his neighbor also had a mental illness, and at 18, Roy’s best friend was admitted to a hospital for treatment of a mental illness. Around the same time, Roy’s brother died by suicide. When Roy was 19, he was so worried that he too had a mental illness, he sought professional help from a psychologist. To his relief, the psychologist reassured Roy that he was, in fact, having normal thoughts and was not mentally ill. “He told me, ‘You’re about one of the sanest people who ever sat across from me,’” Roy said. “That really made me feel good.” This helped to allow Roy to begin healing.

“When you suffer, you have two ways to go: You can either take it negatively and just suffer more — just fill yourself with more pain — or through that suffering, you can develop compassion for others,” Roy said. “I think without a doubt, that I developed a love for other people. It started with a love for helping children, but I think now that it extends to everybody.”

As an adult, Roy’s compassion for the welfare of his parents gave him the courage to admit his mother to Queen’s Medical Center. His mother, he remembers, said hurtful things to Roy as she was restrained and taken out of her home. “She told me, ‘I hate you, I disown you, and I will never talk to you again,’” Roy said during his interview with Wilcox. “And then they took her away. And I was devastated. But I knew this was something that I had to do.” Once his mother was receiving treatment, she was able to clearly understand and express love for her family for the first time. Roy was finally able to build a meaningful relationship with her, and both his sister and himself cared for their mother during the last years of her life.

Sadly, Roy could only seek resolution with his brother after he had died. The fear Roy had of his brother took a toll on Roy throughout his youth, but eventually, he was able to come to terms with him. Roy: “I went to his grave and said, ‘I forgive you, because it’s not your fault. You had a sickness that no one was able to cure at that time.’”  

To family members who have loved ones with mental illness, Roy offers this advice: “Hug your brother, hug your sister, hug your family member who has a mental illness. Just say, ‘I love you.’  Do it often, because we never know if it’s reaching inside and helping them in a small way to heal. We can say that only medicine can heal, but I think that love can heal.  I really believe in that.”

If you or a family member is in need of help in dealing with a mental health crisis, call the AMHD ACCESS Line 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. On O‘ahu, call (808) 832-3100. On the neighbor islands, call toll free at 1-800-753-6879.

To read the transcripts or to download an audio MP3 file of Roy’s appearance on “Long Story Short,” visit http://www.pbshawaii.org.

For more information about Roy Sakuma, visit his website at http://www.roysakuma.net.