Wahiawa stirs up memories of a safer and ‘gentler time’

Wahiawa is an interesting community. Most Oahu residents pass through it on the way to the North Shore and slow down only for traffic lights.

I wrote about Wahiawa last month — mostly about how it was affected on Dec. 7, 1941 — and heard from many who grew up there.

Paula Yonezawa said she grew up near Kaala Elementary in the 1960s and ’70s. “Wahiawa was the best place to live. It was always cool, and I had to wear a jacket or sweater every day to school.

“My best friend, Gail, and I would always meet at the corner of Mahele Street and Kilani Avenue, sit on the curb and talk story almost every evening. Her mother would laugh and think we were crazy. We would call each other up, then say, ‘Meet you at the corner.’

“It was a gentler time. No one locked their cars or homes. Everyone was friendly and respectful of one another, and being a small town, everyone knew and took care of each other. I always felt safe.

“On the weekends my sisters and I would walk up California Avenue to the Wahiawa Theater. We would have popcorn and my favorite candy, Flicks, which came in a tube.

“Gail and I would walk about 2 miles to Leilehua High School, laughing and talking. Once in a while we would make our way to Doris’ Lunch Room (her last name was Ogawa) or Sekiya’s okazuya on Kilani Avenue next to the Victory Theater, and get a snack of potato tempura. They made the best. A quarter went a long ways during those days.

“Near our home there was a little candy store called B Sweet Shop (212 California Ave.). The kids would always stop by to or from school to pick up their favorite treat. They sold all kinds of candies and also cracked seed in the jar. You could buy a package of seed for 5 cents.

“Bill Sugimoto ran the store, and we would see his elderly father sitting in front, watching the world go by.

“I have fond memories of Wahiawa,” Yonezawa concludes. “I still go there often, since my sister still lives there. Times have changed, but I will always remember the good old days.”

Ninety-five year old retired dentist Sadao Honda told me how Leilehua High School adopted the mule as its mascot.

Many people think Leilehua chose the mule because it’s the Army’s mascot, Honda told me. Actually, Harry T. Scott, a physical education teacher who coached the Leilehua football team in 1929, suggested the mule.

“Scott was a 1927 graduate of Central Missouri State Teachers College, whose mascot is the mule. Therefore he dubbed his team the Leilehua Mules.“

I wrote about Judy’s Flowers last month and heard from one of her sons, Dr. Arthur Kamisugi, who told me about his father, Sunao “Flash” Kamisugi.

“My father told me that on the night of the Japanese attack, he and some friends went to Schofield Barracks to offer their help. They were told that there were reports of the Japanese landing tanks on the North Shore and that guarding the gas pumps in Wahiawa would be helpful.

“My father and his friends took their baseball bats and defended the service station gas pumps near Schofield Barracks that night. I always thought that it was a very brave thing to do in such an emergency.”

Elspeth Kerr reminded me that Michel’s restaurant got its start in Wahiawa in 1942. “It was very popular with Schofield soldiers. My mother used to enjoy going there for lunch with the Alliance Francaise, as they called themselves, so they could speak French and eat French food.” It moved to Waikiki in 1959.

Art Choi told me his grandparents owned the land at the corner of Kilani Avenue and Kamehameha Highway and built the Wahiawa Bowling Alley to provide a place for the community to gather.

“My father, Harry Choi, managed the bowling alley for a while. One night he called home and got his kid brother, James, out of bed to come down to help reset bowling pins. In those days it was all done manually.

“The person who normally set the pins that night got hit in the groin from one of the flying bowling pins and was out of commission.”

Last month I mentioned Doc and Eve Hofmeister, who owned Fast Food, my favorite sandwich restaurant. Choi said they had the best po’ boy sandwiches. “Their breads were popular, too. My older brother would deliver it around to different restaurants in town.

“Fast Food was right next to the Top Hat bar, which often had famous local groups such as the Peter Moon Band and Sons of Hawaii.”

Choi says “Wahiawa” means “noisy place” in Hawaiian. “The ancient Hawaiians could hear the pounding of the giant ocean waves at night from the North Shore.”

Wahiawa also has an urban legend. “There is a folk tale that a ‘Green Lady’ lives in a gulch near the botanical garden. I’ve never seen her, but remember venturing down there on several occasions with a bunch of kids looking for her. Someone always yelled out, ‘Green Lady!’ That was it. Everyone ran for their lives!”

“Hawaii Five-O” even had an episode that mentioned the Green Lady.

Wahiawa also had its own slang words, Choi says. “One example was ‘safe,’ which meant ‘weird, crazy, or stupid. Used in a sentence: ‘The guy is acting SAFE.’ ‘That is so SAFE.’

“Any kids that grew up from the 1960s through the early 1990s in Wahiawa knew this word and what it meant. That in itself is SAFE!”

Servco had its humble beginnings as a two-car serv­ice station that Peter Fukunaga opened in Waialua in 1919. When he moved his Waialua Garage company to Wahiawa in the 1920s, he offered $25 to whoever came up with the best new company name. An Army Air Corps sergeant suggested Service Motor Co. because “service was the heart of the company policy.”

I knew that Dot’s restaurant’s parking lot was a roller skating rink around 1938. David Kennedy told me that in the 1940s there was an outdoor ice skating rink in Wahiawa, run by an ice company. It was called the Arctic Ice Skating Rink, at 1115 California Ave.

“The rink had short walls around it and a roof that would be lowered over the rink to help freeze the water.

“At opening,” Kennedy said, “winches would raise the lowered roof, and there would be a mad dash onto the ice. Within 10 minutes we were all skating in about a half-inch of water.

“We would skate for 30 minutes of wet fun, then a bell would sound and we cleared the rink. The roof would be lowered until the next day when the water would have refrozen, and the cycle would begin again.”

Sadao Honda told me there was a Wahiawa Transport Service before the city provided bus service to and from Wahiawa. “It was a point-to-point co-op taxi serv­ice run by Japanese immigrants so Wahiawa residents could get to Honolulu at a reasonable price instead of on the lumbering and infrequent train.

“The taxis were seven- passenger limousines,” Honda says, “with two jump seats between the driver and the passengers. The one-way fares were 35 cents in the 1930s and 50 cents in the 1940s.”

“With the war in 1941, and martial law, the Japanese immigrants, who were technically enemy aliens, lost their taxi licenses and their livelihoods. In their place their sons, who were American citizens, took over the business.

Honda told me he used to deliver for the family tofu business to Sekiya’s Delicatessen, next to the Victory Theater. Honda Tofu closed in 2014 after 98 years.

He met his wife, Jean, whose parents owned Sekiya’s, at their deli. “We have lived happily ever after in our hometown of Wahiawa and are celebrating our 65th wedding anniversary this year.”

Do you have an interesting story of the community you grew up in? If so, email it to me.

Bob Sigall’s “The Companies We Keep 5” book contains stories from the last three years of Rearview Mirror. “The Companies We Keep 1 and 2” are also back in print. Email Sigall at Sigall@yahoo.com.