Paul Kosasa, president and CEO of ABC Stores, recently spoke to my Honolulu Rotary Club. I remember when the company’s stores were limited to Waikiki, but now you can find them in Las Vegas, Guam and Saipan.

Kosasa traced the founding of ABC Stores to his grandfather Morita Kosasa, who emigrated from Japan to work on a sugar plantation in Central Oahu.

After his contract was up, Morita Kosasa settled in Kaimuki, which had just dirt roads back in 1917.

“Morita Kosasa was a grocer, a butcher, a carpenter, a painter, a plumber and an electrician,” Paul said. “Our first store — M. Kosasa Grocery Store — was on 10th Avenue in Kaimuki, and he built it himself.

“My father, Sidney, and my uncle Neil were born on the second floor of the store. My father actually grew up in the retail business.

“He used to tell me that the other kids would be out playing basketball and things like that, but his family told him, ‘You have to stay in the store and work.’

“After McKinley High School he went to UC Berkeley and studied pharmacy. In his senior year at Berkeley, when he was within months of graduation, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

“President Roosevelt signed the order to intern Japanese-Americans, and in April or so his number was called to go to an internment camp.

“But — this is how progressive Berkeley was — the dean let all the Japanese-Americans take the exam early. They all passed and got their degrees,” Paul says.

“The way you were called to go to the internment camp was alphabetically by street,” he continued. “So Sidney would move one street to the next as they were rounding up the Japanese-Americans. That delayed things, but pretty soon he ran out of streets.

“He fell in love with my mom, Minnie, and married her in the internment camp.

“After the war he worked as a pharmacist at Benson Smith at Fort and Hotel streets, downtown.

“Eventually my grandfather, my uncle and my father formed a corporation and opened the first store in Kaimuki on Waialae Avenue.

“Dad was the pharmacist, janitor, buyer and marketer. Just like my grandfather, he had to do everything. My mother was the bookkeeper.

“It was a six-day workweek, from morning to night. That’s how they worked.

“On a trip to Miami Beach in the early 1960s, my mom and dad were walking around and realized one day Waikiki was going to be like this. We should try to open stores in Waikiki because it’s really busy in Miami, they thought.

“Dad had a friend whose market was at 2456 Kalakaua Ave. The owner was getting up there in age and said, ‘Why don’t you take over my business? I’ll do a lease with you.’

“Dad wasn’t a grocer, but he knew drugs and cosmetics and housewares. He brought in the groceries and eventually brought in the souvenirs and T-shirts. And that’s how the ABC Stores got started.”

“From second grade I worked in the Kaimuki store,” Paul recalled. “I would take the bus from school and stock the shelves. Interestingly, everything I learned about our family and culture wasn’t from my parents. It was from the employees.

“The employees would tell me that my parents really respected and honored our work and us as individuals. Work, for them, was very meaningful, and they were really engaged.

“They believed that the role of the store was to serve the community. They felt very proud being a part of that.

“Dad shared profits, when they made money, with the employees. From that I learned that the business of business is the people. You take care of the people and the people will take care of the customers. That’s how I kind of grew up.

“It wasn’t always easy working for my parents. When I worked the summers during high school, the minimum wage at that time was $1.60, and they paid me $1. I actually earned vacation, too, but they took that away from me.

“I had to work twice as hard as anyone else and got less pay, but that was the way our household was run.

“We’re family and had to save on expenses, so you got to work for love.”

ABC stumbled into having stores close to each other. They opened one store near another that was soon to close. But while both were open, they noticed sales did not drop at the one that was closing, and sales at the new store started matching sales at the one that was closing.

“We’re very fortunate to have a chain of stores,” Paul believes. “It’s insanity sometimes to try to operate all these stores and manage all these employees and all the challenges of government regulations, taxes, health care and rent.

“Waikiki has got to be (one of) the most expensive places in the world, and it’s tough. But part of our culture is the underdog mentality.

“Sure, we have competitors from the mainland that try to put us out of business, but we’re pretty fierce ourselves. Our goal was: Whatever they do, we’re going to do better and continue to fight. Hawaii is our territory. We can compete with the best of them.”

I congratulate ABC Stores on 99 years in business.

Bob Sigall, author of the Companies We Keep books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories each Friday of Hawaii people, places and companies. Email him at Sigall@yahoo.com.