At Eight Years Old, She Left Waiʻanae for the Big Island and Called It "Getting Thrown Into Cold Water." Now She's Ready for Okinawa.
One of 42 public high school students selected for the 2026 Hawaiʻi Sister-State Study Tours.
Student Snapshot
Name: Cassadi Cabral
School: Nānākuli High and Intermediate School
Grade: 10th
Home Community: Waiʻanae/Nānākuli, West Oʻahu
Delegation: Okinawa
Travel Dates: March 14–25, 2026
Focus Interests / Extracurriculars: Nānākuli Boys & Girls Club member; drawing, reading, writing; studying Japanese (Novice High 3–Intermediate level); extensive family travel across the US mainland and Bahamas; interest in International Affairs
Career Aspirations: International Affairs
Why They Were Selected
Cassadi has already lived the experience of being transplanted — uprooted from Waiʻanae at eight, dropped into Waikoloa without her sisters, slowly finding her footing again, and then having to reconnect with home all over again when she moved back. That repeated experience of arriving somewhere unfamiliar and learning how to belong gave her something most students her age haven't developed yet: a genuine, hard-won openness to the world. Her vision for Hawaiʻi — rooted in Native land rights and cultural sovereignty — shows a student who thinks about home in terms larger than herself.
What They're Excited About
Experiencing a new culture in person; creating memories of a lifetime; the doors this opens for her future in International Affairs
At Eight Years Old, She Left Waiʻanae for the Big Island and Called It "Getting Thrown Into Cold Water." Now She's Ready for Okinawa.
Cassadi Cabral was eight years old when her family moved from Waiʻanae to Waikoloa, leaving behind her cousins, her grandparents, her aunts, her uncles, and everything familiar. Her three older sisters were already adults living their own lives. It was just Cass, her parents, and a new island that felt completely alien. "The unique culture shock and loneliness of leaving family," she wrote, "felt like getting thrown into cold water the moment you get up." That moment — and the years of finding her footing that followed — shaped everything about who she is today. This March, the Nānākuli High sophomore is taking that hard-won openness all the way to Okinawa.
Cass is a tenth grader at Nānākuli High and Intermediate School in West Oʻahu, a Boys & Girls Club member, an artist, a writer, and a student of Japanese currently at the intermediate level. She wants to work in International Affairs — to connect with people across the world and help others — and she's been building toward that goal with the quiet determination of someone who already knows what it costs to start over somewhere new.
She was selected because her curiosity about the world didn't come from a travel brochure. It came from layovers. From seeing people speaking different languages in mainland airports while flying back to see family. From the way the world suddenly seemed enormous and full of possibility the first time she stepped outside the islands she knew. Cassadi doesn't just want to experience other cultures — she wants to understand them, compare them with her own, and bring back what Hawaiʻi could learn. Her vision for home is specific: a Hawaiʻi where Native people aren't pushed off their ancestral land, where culture is practiced freely, and where the islands are as rich in their own identity as any destination in the world.
"The unique culture shock and loneliness of leaving family felt like getting thrown into cold water the moment you get up."
When Cass comes home to Waiʻanae from Okinawa, she'll carry something new alongside everything she already knows about starting over and finding belonging. For a community on the west side that has its own long story of displacement and resilience, that kind of perspective — earned, not borrowed — matters deeply.
