Lylas Uradomo has been documenting the last batch of each product on her Facebook page: the last batch of spiced takuan, the last batch of ogo onion, the last batch of sanbai zuke. The beloved Japanese-
style pickled vegetables from Maui, sold under the simple brand name “Maui Brand,” as of this month, are no longer in production. What is on store shelves is all that remains.
“Sometimes, the shoes you try to fill are shoes that are too big,” said Ira Uradomo, son of the founders of the business, Masaru and Celestine Uradomo. “Choosing to continue as sole operator when my brother decided to quit almost six years ago was a crazy decision on my part. I did take it as a personal challenge and figured I will ‘go till no can.’”
Recently, he decided he had reached that point. Though he struggled at first, Uradomo said he got the business to where it was running smoothly and he was enjoying the long hours of toil. Lylas, his wife, helped out with the paperwork. But then it got to be too much.
“In the recent months it was brought to my attention that I was on a hamster wheel. The business owned me, not the other way around. It was not an easy decision to come to,” he said.
Masaru and Celestine Uradomo started farming in a garden-sized plot in Kula in 1969, calling their business M. Uradomo Farms. They tried to do something thought nearly impossible — grow the highly coveted sweet Maui onions during the winter months. By December 1970, their first crop of winter Maui onions was ready for harvest. However, they found there were many “off-grade” onions they didn’t want to send to market but were too good to waste.
Then, inspiration struck in a moment that has become part of family legend: Masaru happened upon a book just lying on the road in front of his farm. From that book, he got the idea of pickling vegetables without using preservatives — a novel idea since preservatives were a common additive at the time.
In May 1976 the Uradomos started producing pickled onions without added preservatives, offering “value added” natural products decades before the trend. They started pickling radishes and cucumbers and adding other flavors. Soon, Maui Brand pickles were being brought as omiyage to other islands, and their popularity in Hawaii grew. Sales later expanded to West Coast distributors, and to select markets across the country.
The sweet pickled radish (with or without seaweed and chili pepper) is pungent enough to clear a room when you twist the lid off the jar, and is, for generations of Maui kids, an indelible taste-memory of family dinners, beach picnics, school potlucks and the No. 1 thing they craved from home when they were away in college.
In 1977 the Los Angeles Times proclaimed Uradomo the King of Maui Onions in a story that was picked up in newspapers across the country. Family scrapbooks contain letters of praise from fans like Frank Sinatra and Ronald Reagan and from farmers from all over who would come to Maui and stop by the farm to talk story.
Ira and his three siblings all worked on the farm
as kids.
“I don’t know if you can call it work. Mostly getting in the way,” he said. “In the younger years I hated it, but later I appreciated the fact that at the end of the day or crop, you could look back and see what you did or were a part of and have a sense of accomplishment.”
Ira’s children are now both in college pursuing their own interests. “Their school and other activities were the priority,” he said.
Uradomo said he is still working out plans for the future of the farm land and for what he will do next. “The recipes may be passed onto the next person that would like to carry on the legacy,” he said.
While Lylas posts photos of the last batch of each product, her Facebook friends post their sorrow at the end of a treasured Maui taste. The Uradomos feel that way, too.
“I learned from both my parents that life goes on, it’s how you adjust and recover that makes you successful,” Ira Uradomo said.
Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.
