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TI: Okay, so 1944 you graduate from McKinley High School, and this is while you are being boarded at the Okumura House. After you graduate from McKinley High School, what happens next?

TM: Well, it was a question of how to get to the university, to pay my tuition, and room and board. And by a stroke of luck, my cousin was working part-time in the office at the Halekulani Hotel. An opening occurred in the dining department. They were looking for a part-time worker to work in the evenings, so my cousin approached me and said that he could arrange for me to see the management of the Halekulani Hotel to see if I can get the job. I was eager, fully eager to do that so I had an appointment with the manager of the Halekulani Hotel, the head waiter, and other people involved. They accepted me so I was able to get to the university while staying at the Halekulani. They gave me room and board and I worked three evenings per evening working in the dining department.

TI: I'm sorry, so three hours per evening?

TM: I mean, yes, three hours.

TI: So I'm from the mainland and so explain to me, in 1944, the Halekulani in terms of as a hotel. Describe the Halekulani in terms of how important or how it was one of the top hotels in Honolulu at this time.

TM: Halekulani was a rather small hotel, but a well known hotel. It was considered one of the top hotels and they had bungalows at that time, different bungalows, not a single big building. The main building had rooms but mostly it was spread with bungalows around which meant that working in room service you had to move around to go to different bungalows. My job was in room service, I was energetic enough, able to move around, and at night made so many, you know, servings.

TI: So people would do essentially room service so they would call to the restaurant or to the desk and say they would want dinner and then you would have to go pick it up at the kitchen and bring it to the bungalow. And then later on, pick up the plates and bring everything back. And you did this three hours a night. How many a nights a week did you have to work?

TM: Actually, five nights a week, I had two days off, Saturday and Sunday were my free time. I had to learn how to work in the room service. It was touch and go at the beginning. I had to learn how to balance a tray with foods on it. (...) The head room service person said, "You go out to the beach, carry a tray, and put sand on it, and keep balancing and then learn how to balance the tray." That was crucial. That's a very important part of it. Later on I was told how to make sandwiches and pick up food from the kitchen and then make the order for each service.

TI: So in addition to just being a waiter, it's some of the simpler foods, you had actually to be kind of like a short order cook, you had to, like, make a sandwich and if it was maybe a soup or something, go get the soup and just do those kinds of things on your own, I see. And then on the beach, to learn how to balance, why the beach, why did they let you do it there?

TM: Because that room was not big enough for me to just circle around, and that beach, it was open and even if you dropped items, it didn't hurt. In the dining room, it's easy to become messy. The good part was that every order that I took, I had a tip. The guests made it a point to tip you. And that kept me going because I was paid fifty dollars per month from the hotel, and then with the tip I was able to manage my costs at the University of Hawaii.

TI: On a typical night, how much tip would you get?

TM: I would think about three to four dollars a night.

TI: So this is during the war, this is, you know, 1944, summer of 1944, you start. Who are the guests coming to the Halekulani at this time?

TM: The guests were from the military, officers in the military stayed here. And newspaper and reporters (who) worked in the Pacific came over, movie actors and actresses, very few business people and very few local people but they had enough visitors and enough guests to keep the hotel busy.

TI: So I'm wondering, so these people are, many of them are from the mainland so they're not local. Coming from the mainland, during the war, you realize that there was a lot of anti-Japanese feelings, especially on the West Coast and places like California. Did you ever have guests who were surprised to see Japanese just walking around serving them and was there any anti-Japanese feelings from the guests towards any of the Japanese working at the Halekulani?

TM: Not that I know. Apparently, the guests were quite intelligent. They got friendly with the workers because it was a rather small hotel. You did service for them, they appreciated it, and they started calling you by your first name. And it was a friendly atmosphere, I didn't have any qualms about it. It wasn't anti-Japanese. But there was an incident I cannot forget. Apparently, one of the guests called the police department saying that there was a Japanese worker working there who had a Japanese flag on his cap. When the officers came, they found out that the worker had a Red Cross pin on his cap. Everyone had a big laugh because, from a distance it looked like a Japanese rising sun pin. And that's the only incident I can recall where you had sort of a friction that happened.

TI: Now that's interesting so she thought that this worker had sympathies towards Japan and was wearing, blatantly wearing a Japanese flag on his cap and so she called the police. What did she, what was her reaction when she realized that it was just a Red Cross pin?

TM: She was speechless and I know that she apologized saying that she didn't know that it was a Red Cross pin rather than a Japanese flag pin.

TI: Yeah, there was another incident that you wrote about. April 1, 1946, when you were working at the Halekulani, there was a tsunami?

TM: Yes.

TI: Tell me about that.

TM: Well, you did not expect a tsunami to happen. They had no means of letting you know that tsunami was coming and all of a sudden the whole islands, even the neighbor islands, were affected by this tsunami. I, working at the Halekulani that morning, could see the ocean where huge waves started coming in and then went up to the yard and into the dining room. And then the waves would retract and you could see large areas of coral exposed, fish jumping up and down and then another huge wave would come, and then retract again. This happened about three or four times and then you realized it was a tremendous (tsunami) that hit the island. And later on, we found out that the Big Island was the island that suffered the most. Some lives were lost.

TI: So the damage wasn't that bad in Waikiki area?

TM: No.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.