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MN: What kind of functions or community affairs was your dad involved in?

KM: Basically Japanese school, Board of Education type activities. And besides that, he was, as I said early on, a volunteer worker for the consul general in Honolulu and one of his jobs was to keep in touch with the Japanese community. And those days it required the recordation of birth if you wanted your child to be recorded into the Japanese family record. And he was one of those who assisted the Japanese people in this regard. My task was to drive him around, after I got my license, picking him up and going to functions and later on picking him up from the place.

MN: You know, in those days, who were some of the other Japanese men who were active in the Japanese community like your father?

KM: Basically the townspeople like Mr. Onishi of the Onishi store. Mr. Kinoshita of the Kinoshita mercantile company, father and son combination of the Kobayashi store. And the Kobayashi store, later on, after internment, after the war, the Kobayashis were interned. The family, in the case of Kobayashi, the whole family went to one of the, Jerome, I think, with the Hawaiian group. And there they picked up the business of potato chips, and they're the ones that became the Maui potato chip manufacturers. Until today, I think they still have the family franchise because the eldest grandson of elder Kobayashi, he died early, about three or four years ago he died. I don't know what happened to the franchise, but they're the ones that developed Maui potato chips.

MN: So you had your father, Mr. Onishi, Mr. Kinoshita...

KM: Mr. Toda, who was the leading philanthropist and financial, whatchacall... he was more or less the leader of the Kahului group in more ways than just being financially the pharmacy. He spoke English and his pharmacy was the pharmacy of Maui at that time, because he supplied all the drugs and that paraphernalia to Kula Sanitarium. And Kula Sanitarium was this big, big hospital in Maui. Besides, the plantation had a Puunene plantation hospital. I don't know if Lahaina had any hospital. The big hospital in Maui was the Kula sanitarium.

MN: You know, you just mentioned that Mr. Toda spoke English.

KM: He spoke English. That's why his name was Robert Toda.

MN: Was he Issei or Nisei?

KM: First generation, first generation.

MN: Would you know if he was American-educated or Japan-educated?

KM: I don't know his background. All I know is we were next door neighbors for many, many years.

MN: And you know, you called him the leader and also a philanthropist.

KM: I understood that he was considered the wealthy member of the Kahului merchant group. And so many of the functions and whatnot, he was basically the, not the financier but in charge of the financial aspect as I understand it. So you had Bon Odori, then you had all kinds of Japanese festivals, this and that. Somehow he was always involved. Together, not only with the merchant family and group, but with the camp, we always had some of the persons representing the camp. And I think the camp group basically was represented by Mr. Sado, who was a newspaper representative for Hawaii Hochi or Nippu Jiji at that time. And he lived in the camp, and so he more or less, although he was a newspaperman, he kind of represented the camp group. And he was an ex-sumotori from Japan, I think. Not, I don't know if he's professional, but he was the so-called man that I related, connected with my background of Japanese sumo. And he was one of the leaders, not only in Maui, but Maui was one of the leading participant of Japanese sumo before the war. So they had statewide tournaments, sumo tournaments in Maui. And he was always in charge. Sumo was very prevalent before the war. As I said, earlier I think, we had rankings. There was a grand champion and ozeki and all these different levels of sumotori in Hawaii, and they used to have state tournaments in Kahului, I remember.

MN: You were mentioning that Mr. Toda would, I guess, support the financial backing of activities in the Japanese community.

KM: Community of Maui.

MN: What kind of activities were there in the Japanese community? You mentioned Obon, sumotori tournaments?

KM: All of the community activities involved the celebration of the emperor's birthday, Boy's Day celebration, Girl's Day celebration, within community of Kahului or within the island of Maui. And things, sometimes you had an island-wide affair. And then most of the time it's maybe just limited to Kahului. Basic city or town was Kahului. Wailuku, which was the center of the county government, and then you had Lahaina which was so far away, on the part of the island that was a separate town by itself. And Paia was a smaller town, but still that's considered a town. And so, so-called towns were Lahaina, Wailuku, Kahului, Paia. I guess those were the so-called places called towns. Not cities, but towns.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.