Cooke’s grandfather had life saved by a kahuna

Last month, I talked to Sam Cooke about the Honolulu Museum of Art, founded by his grandparents. His ancestors founded Castle & Cooke, Royal School, Bank of Hawaii, Molokai Ranch, Grove Farm, Wilcox Hospital, and several other companies and nonprofits.

Cooke had a few other stories about his family that I thought my readers would find interesting.

"My grandfather, Charles Montague Cooke Jr., had a dairy in Manoa in the 1920s where my house now stands. It was called the Kaimi Dairy. It extended from Cooper Road to the Wai‘oli Tea Room. The headman was Kumaichi Tomonari. We called him Tomo.

"Tomo came to my grandfather one day and told him that he wanted to get married. He showed him a book of picture brides from Japan. He pointed at one. Her name was Taka Jyo. ‘That’s the one,’ he said."

She arrived six weeks later and they married. On their marriage license, her place of residence was stamped "Immigration Station," and their witness was "C. Montague Cooke, Jr."

They lived on the 30-acre dairy and had four kids, whom they named for George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin and Martha Washington. They were called George, Lincoln, Frank and Martha.

It was not uncommon for families here to send their children to school in Japan, and the Tomonaris sent Lincoln to Tokyo. Many first-generation Japanese (issei) parents sent their children to their homeland for a proper Japanese upbringing. Such children were called "kibei," which literally means "return to America."

"Lincoln sent letters home from school that sounded just like any other young man," says his niece, Myra Tomonari-Tuggle. He wrote about vacations, parties, trips to the countryside, ice skating and, of course, schoolwork.

"Lincoln belonged to a ‘Nisei Club,’ which sounds like a group of Hawaii-born students, and he says in one of his 1941 letters that a major topic of discussion was whether they would be able to return to school in Japan if they went back home to Hawaii for a visit.

"In 1940 and 1941, however, conditions in Japan were worsening because of impending war, and extracurricular activities were increasingly curtailed."

Lincoln was conscripted to fight in the Japanese Army. When I asked Myra how a man named after Abraham Lincoln would be able to fit into the Japanese army and fight Americans, she said he probably went by his Japanese middle name, Hiroshi.

Unfortunately, Lincoln was killed in action in the Solomon Islands.

After the war, Frank Tomonari worked for the old Cooke Trust Co., starting at an entry-level position and working his way up to trust officer and then to vice president. His son, Al Tomonari, is the general manager at the Ala Moana Neiman Marcus.

"My wife, Mary, and I have an old heiau on our Manoa property," Sam Cooke continues. "I hired a woman from Arizona who worked for a Hawaii archaeology firm called International Archaeological Research Institute. Six weeks later, she knocked on my door. It was Myra Tomonari-Tuggle, Frank Tomonari’s daughter!

"As Manoa developed, residents objected to the smells and sounds of a dairy and we moved it to Olomana," Cooke says.

The Tomonaris left the dairy and became storekeepers. One store was on Queen Emma Lane and another was on Liona Place (near Ala Moana Center). The family lived at the Liona Place address.

"Speaking of presidents of the United States," Cooke continues, "I had one over to my house one day. This was in the 1970s. My oldest daughter brought a number of friends from Punahou over for a tea party.

"Included in the group was a black young man with a large Afro who was in her class. He introduced himself as Barry Obama. I had no idea that one day he would be president of the United States. I have a picture of them in my living room."

The last story about his grandfather, Charles Montague Cooke Jr., was that he was born prematurely. Monty, as he was called, was so small, less than 3 pounds, that they put him in a shoe box.

"Western doctors tried every kind of medicine to try and save him but it didn’t help. My great-grandfather went to Kona and found a Kahuna Lapaau — a healer named Ka‘aina. She was very striking looking, and had blue eyes. She came to Honolulu and saved the boy’s life using the old Hawaiian ways.

"Monty became a malacologist at the Bishop Museum — studying mollusks. He took care of the healer for the rest of her life. She lived to be 114 and saved many lives. She never married, but had one adopted son that she named Montague Cooke."

Bob Sigall is the author of the “The Companies We Keep” books. His third book is now available in the Amazon Kindle store. Email him at Sigall@Yahoo.com.