<Begin Segment 9>

TI: How about other community events like Obon or picnics? Do they have those back in the old days?

SO: In the old days, we used to have picnics, so we used to hire a bus. And those days, we didn't have a fancy bus in Kona. All the bus were made from truck body, with one (1" x 12") lumbers, and some of them without seating, and we used to hire those buses. And at that time, lots of the roads been (leading to a) hotel. This road used to be all gravel road, and it took time and all with the swaying and everything, lot of people used to get motion sickness. [Laughs]

TI: And then for picnics, what kind of activities would happen at picnics?

SO: Picnics it's more children swimming because that's the only time they're able to go saltwater swimming. So we always enjoy going to a picnic. And then you bring your own lunch, and then at the beach, you'll share with all the different families, all the different foods. And we used to play all different kinds of games, ladies used to play the card games, and men used to play baseball, volleyball, and all those things, games.

TI: And what would the kids play?

SO: Kids? Oh, they play with the sand, bring the shovel and buckets.

TI: Yeah, it sounds fun. How about the relationship of the Japanese community with other communities like the whites or other ethnic groups? What was that like in Kona?

SO: At first, it was, seemed like statewide. Like the Republican party, they used to control, they used to call it the B-5, and they used to control all the business statewide. So when the boys, when Japanese boys came back from service, now they had the GI Bill money to go to college. So they all went to college, and then they got their education, they became attorneys, and then when they came home from the mainland college, then they got into politics, and then now they had a chance to create the middle class. Because way back, we didn't have any middle class, just first class and (low) class. So the Japanese and the Filipinos and all those were all known as the lower class people. So once they got organized, then they became stronger and stronger in politics. The Democrats began controlling the politics in Hawaii, and then there was a big fight, big fight. In fact, (T.H.) Davis, Lewers and Cook, (Alexander & Balwin, AMFAC, Castle & Cook) represented all those, they controlled, used to control Hawaii. So they did bring them up, and then after that, we had middle class people now. So the middle class became stronger and stronger. They started, they began controlling the government. So things became much better after that.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.