Carmelite Sister Mary Veronica of Jesus
Maui plantation-born nun lived the contemplative life for 64 years
By Patrick Downes
Hawaii Catholic Herald
Sister Mary Veronica of Jesus, a Carmelite nun, the daughter of Okinawan immigrants to Hawaii, died on July 6 at Carmel of St. Teresa, a Carmelite monastery in Alhambra, California. She was 91, and in religious life for 64 years.
Sister Veronica was born Alice Arakaki on May 12, 1928, to Buddhist parents in an arranged marriage, in the sugarcane plantation village of Kaheka, near Paia, on Maui. She was the middle child of five, with two older sisters and two younger brothers. When she was in the sixth grade, the family moved to Oahu.
In high school, Alice took a special course in retailing in the hopes of landing a good job after high school. Instead, her studiousness led to a college scholarship.
She went to the University of Hawaii and majored in business. After graduation Alice got a job at the Catholic School Department as secretary to the superintendent Msgr. Daniel Dever. She worked there for five years before entering the convent.
In an interview in the spring 2007 newsletter for the Cloistered Carmelite Nuns Auxiliary of Carmel of St. Teresa in Alhambra, on the occasion of her 50th anniversary as a Carmelite, she recalled her first attraction to the Catholic Church.
“My parents were Buddhists. They always believed in God, but we didn’t go to church regularly,” Sister Veronica said. “I do remember that, as a little girl, I used to walk through a pasture that was right next to a Catholic church. I had heard all kinds of scary stories about the church, but somehow it always intrigued me. I remember one night when all the electricity went out and there were no lights anywhere except in that church which was all lit up with candles — so beautiful.”
After she graduated from high school, Alice took a summer job as a trimmer at the pineapple cannery. With not much to do in her spare time, she tagged along with her sister who was accompanying a friend taking catechism classes.
“That’s how it all started,” she said. “I got interested. Very interested. I was baptized that September.”
She began going to daily Mass and became very involved in the university’s Newman Club. After graduating, while working at the school department, she would attend Mass next door at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace. She also became active in the Xavier Club for Japanese Catholics.
Her call to be a Carmelite was more inexplicable.
“It wasn’t a sudden thing,” she said. “I think the desire to become a nun was planted in my heart when I was taking instructions. I kept avoiding it. My friends kept telling me that I should become a nun and even my boss, the superintendent, was telling me that I should consider becoming a nun.
“One Friday, I told him, ‘Don’t ever talk to me about it again.’ It was over that very weekend that I finally made my decision. When I came into work on Monday morning, I said to him, ‘I’m going to enter Carmel.’ It was March 28, St. Theresa’s birthday!”
“For a long time I had had the feeling I was going to become a nun someday. I kept putting it off because I was enjoying my life and having such a good time. I think God just finally gave me a big push!”
Alice picked the Carmelites because she thought that if she was going to choose this life, she wanted to “go all the way” and pick “the most difficult order” possible.
She wrote to the prioress at the Carmelite Monastery in Long Beach, California, “because two others from our Xavier Club had been directed there.” She called herself a “mail order nun” — “accepted sight unseen.”
She entered on Sept. 8, 1955.
Her parents, who didn’t mind her becoming a Catholic, objected strongly when she decided to enter the convent. But when she received her habit, her mother saw how happy she was and accepted her decision.
She lived at the Long Beach monastery, Carmel of St. Joseph, for more than 40 years until it closed and the nuns were reassigned to other convents. She was then accepted at Carmel of St. Teresa in Alhambra.
Sister Veronica is survived by her sister Arlene Uechi and brother George Arakaki, both of Kaneohe, and nieces and nephews. She was interred at Calvary Cemetery on Whittier Boulevard.
