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WN: If you were to draw like a chart, where does Kahului Railroad fit in on the whole, the A&B hierarchy?

KM: Kahului Railroad Company, and I guess stevedoring was under the railroad as well as... and under the complete ownership of A&B, I think.

WN: So, for example, HCNS would be a separate...

KM: Sugar Company was completely separate.

WN: But under A&B though?

KM: I guess, different. The stevedoring business, I think, and railroading was completely a distinct operation. And that was primarily what it was until the end of World War II when they decided to sell the land to individual owners. When the Kahului was developed as what they called "Dream City," the first thing they did was to sell lands. Whole bunch of these plantation homes were destroyed and people had to buy their own homes, and Dream City was available for them to become landowners and homeowners in Maui.

MN: But, you know, going back to your mother's and father's time, when you looked at Kahului, what controlled the town economically and politically?

KM: The life was dependent on the stevedoring business completely, especially in Kahului. Of course, the railroading was part of stevedoring because sugar had to be transported from Puunene, Paia, even from Lahaina, because the Lahaina port was not big enough to unload and load sugar. So Kahului basically was the port town where the entire, and even pineapple, the railroad had to haul in the pineapple, haul in the sugar to the port. And Maui Pineapple was located right in the heart of Kahului. And from the mountains of Makawao, up there. Pineapple has to be grown three thousand feet high elevation. And so it required a lot of hauling, and the railroad existed for this hauling until just before World War II, the trucking became, into vogue. Took a lot of years before they completely took over the transportation business. But until then, the railroad was an integral part. For instance, when I started to go to... until I started to go to high school, my brothers and sisters had to commute from Kahului to Hamakuapoko, which was about 12 miles away from Kahului, by train. They commuted by train, there was no bus system at that time. And my time when I started to go to high school, the buses took over. And so until my time, people went to Hamakuapoko, especially from central Maui, Wailuku and Kahului and Puunene, we all commuted to high school by train.

MN: And you know, when you say that Kahului was a place dominated by Kahului Railroad and stevedoring, what were the people who lived in Kahului doing for a living then?

KM: Well, the merchants group, like my parents, we were both town people versus camp people. Camp people were all the stevedoring families, except there were a few independent fishermen. I remember, for a while, there was a cotton mill in Kahului, but that went out of business very early. I don't remember how long it lasted, but I remember it was a cotton milling business run by a Japanese family. But independent business in Kahului, other than the town of Kahului, where you had, I would say... if I sat down and counted, there were just a handful of businesses run by... the tailor shop, the watchmaker, the barber shop. The pharmacy was Toda Drug, grocery store was Ah Fook, and small little independent businesses run by individual families as compared to one big store was known as the Puunene Store, which was a big, at that time considered a big store. And I don't understand why it was named Puunene, except I don't remember doing any marketing over there. Because there was a big... and then there was another store known as the Kahului store, which was run by the railroad. And this was more or less like a wholesale furniture, fixtures, appliances, as I recall.

And so private businesses in Kahului, until Haleakala Dairy started a meat processing plant in Kahului, which was not railroad connected. And, of course, the Japanese school was not connected, the Shinto Buddhist churches were not connected. And we had the banks which were Bishop. Even today I think the Bishop First Hawaiian Bank is there, it was known back then as Bishop Bank. And I can't recall any independent big business. The first -- I can say this -- is the first indication of independency was a market started by Ooka. If you studied the history of Maui, Ooka. What they did, Mr. Ooka did, was a brand new idea. What he did was he built a, almost half a block, not half a block, but a complex where he would lease out subleases to different merchants within his building. I think this is the first concept that started out this, like a GEM store. But Mr. Ooka did this in Kahului. He had a fish market within his building. The picture that you may have seen earlier, a row of fish markets were in town proper. But Mr. Ooka built this building within which he had his grocery store, fish market, coffee shop, flower shop and a couple of other... of course, there were a few independent insurance salesmen. The beginning, Mr. Kagawa, L.T. Kagawa's Continental Insurance, his brother, I think, started the insurance business in Kahului. Mr. Hatanaka, but he lived in Wailuku. But in Kahului, Mr. Kagawa was an independent insurance man. But other than that, I don't recall anybody that's living in Kahului not connected with the railroad.

MN: You know, I noticed that many of the names you mentioned are Japanese names.

KM: Almost all. Kahului was predominantly, I would say, ninety percent Japanese Americans. We had a very, the entire life in Kahului as I grew up was, I would go to grammar school in Kahului, grammar school, eight o'clock until one-thirty, I think it was one-thirty. After one-thirty I would go to Japanese school. Japanese school had three periods, I think, first, second and third periods, because you couldn't take all the kids at one time. And most of the afternoon until late in the evening was at Japanese school. And activities of the school, I do recall that in those days, little pageants were popular, where the schools would sponsor play day or whatever, but our grammar school maybe had once or twice. And I can only recall in my so-called eight years that I was in grammar school, a few instances where we had productions. I remember dancing to a Filipino dance, when I was, I would say, about fourth or fifth grade. And younger than that I remember becoming a tin soldier. We did the routine of marching in step to that famous tin soldier music. And even today, we still hear it every now and then. But more than the grammar school, every other facet of social life was Japanese school.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.