If ever anyone doubted the truth of one good turn deserving another, the tale of Hawaii’s “Oroku” restaurateurs proves the old adage. It was in the early 1920s that Okinawan immigrant Ushi Takara concluded his contract as a plantation laborer and, realizing he had no skills or education to advance, went to work in a restaurant washing dishes and scrubbing potatoes. Initially, no pay was involved, but he was fed for his work.

After gaining kitchen experience, Takara in 1923 opened the American Cafe, near the state Capitol and catering to businessmen and politicians. The menu included such items as steak, pork chops, fish and turtle steak — no Japanese or Okinawan food, or any other kind of “home cooking” — and the restaurant was ahead of its time with tablecloths and air conditioning.

Takara’s venture was financed through a “tano­moshi,” a practice of pooling money that members would receive in turn, to meet personal or business needs.

Once established, the Oroku village native offered other Oroku emigrants the same start: Wash dishes and scrub potatoes at American Cafe, learn the business and, with a tanomoshi, open their own restaurants.

Over time, 75 former Oroku residents opened restaurants locally; among those were Frankie’s Cafe, Times Grill and Wisteria.

An exhibit about Hawaii’s Oroku-owned restaurants, as well as another 250 owned or run by Okinawan families, is on display at Hono­lulu Hale through Feb. 8.

“Hawai‘i Okinawan Restaurants” comprises a collection of menus, stories and photographs of some of those venues. The show is the result of the Hawaii Okinawan Restaurant Project, a joint effort of the Hawaii United Okinawa Association and the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii.

“The menus are fascinating. We can learn so much from them,” said Shari Tamashiro, a Kapi­olani Community College cybrarian (libra­rian who works with digital resources) and past president of the Hawaiian Historical Society. Tamashiro is digitizing and archiving items for the project and to add to the Hawaiian Collection at the University of Hawaii’s Hamilton Library.

“I was shocked to see steak, lobster, lamb, frog legs, mint jelly on the Aloha Grill menu,” she said. Prices of the time: 30 cents for a la carte servings of ham steak or leg of veal.

The project was launched in 2000 when Columbia Inn was closing. Prompted by the cultural center, Columbia Inn owner Gene Kane­shiro and Howard Takara (whose parents ran Yuki’s Cafe), along with Takara’s daughter Holly, gathered oral histories from Oroku restaurateurs, many of whose businesses had long been closed. This went on for years.

“These guys were not trained historians or archivists, but they had a job to do so they just did it. Because of them the story is not lost,” said Tamashiro. For their work, the society last year designated the duo “Kahu Ikena,” or Caretakers of Knowledge.

As an expansion of the Oroku project, an additional 250 restaurants were identified as Okinawan-owned or run.

“The other part of this story was their spirit of cooperation,” said Tamashiro. “If someone at Columbia Inn called the Wisteria and said, ‘Hey, we’re running low. Can I buy a case of Bud(weiser)?’ The answer was always, ‘Yes — shall we bring it over?’”

Now Tamashiro is on to gathering information for Phase 3 of the project: lists of neighbor-island venues, current Okinawan-owned and run eateries and restaurants serving Okinawan cuisine, along with the continued archiving of menus.

She’s making a plea to the public to share information and old menus they might find stashed at the bottom of drawers in old family homes.

“We’ve lost a lot of menus,” Tamashiro said. “I hope before it’s too late we can recover some. If we don’t do this now, then when? Our window is closing. I’m hoping more people will step up.”

To share memories and information about Hawaii’s Okinawan-owned restaurants past and present, email Shari Tamashiro at pigsfromthesea@gmail.com.