Many of our residents’ ancestors came to Hawaii to work on sugar or pineapple plantations. Some of them left when their contracts were up to start their own mom-and-pop stores.
But for some there was an intermediate step — often a small store run out of their plantation home.
Big Island resident Ken Fujii says these single proprietor micro-businesses served a vital community need but are largely forgotten. Most existed for just a few decades.
“These small businesses existed both to serve the community and to supplement the incomes of low-paid plantation families,” Fujii believes.
“This information is based on the many family talk-story sessions on the weekends at my grandparents’ house, over a hot pot of sukiyaki and drinks.”
In Ken Fujii’s family, at Onomea Sugar Co. in Papaikou, north of Hilo, it started with his grandmother Chiyo Hayakawa.
“She had an idea to make money. She would start a business, a general store to sell food and other necessities to the plantation community.”
The Onomea Sugar Co. store sold most of the necessities for the workers but sometimes lacked the ethnic specialties that Japanese, Filipino and other local residents requested, Fujii says.
“So she started the Hayakawa General Store in the front room of their house in Papaikou. There she sold shoyu, rice, ume, Japanese pickles, flour, candies, green tea, coffee, salt, spices, Japanese vinegar, tobacco, as well as fresh vegetables and eggs from their backyard farm.
“She also sold goods like candles and kerosene lanterns, and koi-nobori, or carp streamers, for Boys’ Day. And she sometimes even sold bacalao (dried salted codfish) for the Portuguese customers to use during Lent.”
She did not sell sugar because on the sugar plantation, sugar was a “free benefit” for the workers. “You just took a container, like a pot, down to the sugar mill and scooped up all the sugar you wanted from the huge piles of raw sugar stored in the warehouse.
“Because sugar was free and plentiful, it was frequently used for flavoring and preserving foods, which explains why Japanese dishes made in Hawaii today are sweeter and less salty than their Japanese and other Asian counterparts.
“A lot of local preparations use a simple sugar-and-shoyu mixture to flavor everything from meats and vegetables to hot dogs and Vienna sausages. It’s the sugar plantation heritage that many folks in Hawaii still share to this day.”
The eldest Hayakawa daughter, Michino Hayakawa, learned how to sew and became a professional seamstress. She operated a dressmaking shop on the ground floor next to the general store. Her customers would bring pictures of dresses from fashion magazines or would ask her to make a dress like the one that popular silent screen stars wore.
Stocking the Hayakawa General Store with merchandise was not easy. There was no delivery from wholesalers to stores in the countryside in the early days. “So on Saturdays my grandmother and her two young sons took the Hawaii Consolidated Railway passenger train from Papaikou to Hilo town for 5 cents one-way fare each, to go shopping for supplies.
“At the Theo H. Davies wholesalers, they bought rice, shoyu, salt, flour and other commodities for their store,” Fujii says, “and then carried their purchases down to the train station at the foot of Waianuenue Avenue in Hilo. It was a heavy load for the two boys and their mother, but that was the only way to do it.”
The boys pulled a small homemade wagon to transport the heavy barrels of shoyu, flour and sacks of rice, which were all loaded onto the train for their return trip. Upon arriving in Papaikou, they had to transport the load from the train station to their house.
In those days food often did not come prepackaged in the store. The merchandise was contained in large barrels or crockery (which came from Japan or the mainland), and you bought the quantity that you wanted or that you could afford.
“Housewives who wanted shoyu brought their container or pot from home and bought the shoyu by the ladle … one large ladle of shoyu for 3 cents or one small ladle of salt for 2 cents.
“Dry items like salt and tea were put in brown paper sacks for the customer. For wet products or liquids, the customer brought his or her own container.
“The general store was a success as many immigrants in the community wanted to patronize a fellow plantation worker,” Fujii surmises. “Sometimes customers wanted a chicken or two, and Grandma would go to the chicken coop and bring out two fryers or roasters to sell to the customer.”
In other parts of the plantation, other enterprising households started up other businesses. “There was the tofu man who carried his load of freshly made tofu balanced on poles on his shoulders, shouting, ‘Tofu, tofu,’ and the housewives would come outside with a pot or bowl to receive one or two blocks of tofu for 5 cents apiece.
“And the yasai (vegetable) man would push his cart with fresh fruits and vegetables from his farm, ringing a bell, and we all knew he was nearby. This was like a mobile farmers market coming down the road to your house. And the Chinese manapua man also came by with his supply of char siu bao and chow mein noodles. We all had our favorite food vendors.
“Those were good times for the general store. Business from the plantation residents was strong.
“But as the 20th century progressed, with the introduction of the automobile and the construction of primitive, dusty gravel roads along the Hamakua Coast, and with the construction of bridges to accommodate wagons and cars across the Wailuku River and other gullies, plantation residents could go to Hilo to purchase goods, and the business at the Hayakawa General Store gradually dwindled until Grandma decided to close shop.
“Life was improving for the plantation residents. Pay was increasing,” Fujii says. “Many even saved up enough money to buy their own cars. They no longer needed a small general store in the community to satisfy their shopping needs.
“In addition, labor laws were gradually giving workers a legal standard of an eight-hour workday, followed by a workweek of 44 hours (which meant a half-workday on Saturday) and finally a 40-hour workweek, which meant five workdays per week. Workers now had a two-day weekend. Progress was coming to the plantation workforce. Life was good.
“Today most of those small old-time plantation stores, restaurants and shops are no longer around. They did not survive progress. New ones have taken their place, as the plantations are gone, replaced by small businesses serving special community needs, small farms and residential neighborhoods.
“Businesses today as well as in the olden days had to adjust to changing times and customer tastes to survive, or go out of business. Even the large sugar plantations are just a memory among the old-timers of the Big Island.
“King Sugar may be dead, but its memory of life on the plantation, albeit difficult, still lingers fondly among us old folks,” Fujii concludes. “Many immigrants stayed beyond their initial contracts and raised families and sent their children to school and even to college to eventually become the backbone of the local economy.
“We are all beneficiaries of the hard work and dedication of our earliest ancestors who came from far and wide to endure hard work and live in Hawaii.”
Bob Sigall is the author of the “The Companies We Keep” books. Email him your questions or suggestions at Sigall@Yahoo.com.
