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MAE MORITA ITAMURA AN INDEPENDENT WOMAN I feel that I accomplished my aim in my life. To take good care of my own family. At the same time, make some money to take care myself. Because in this life, you have to be independent, you know. Gee, when you come and ask me all these questions, just like dream, you know. (Laughs.) Going into the past, yeah? Good, sometimes, you remember. Mae Morita Itamura was born in 1905 in Nähiku, Maui. When her father became ill in 1923, she quit high school and worked as a gasoline pump attendant for Kitagawa Motors in Spreckelsville. The following year, she clerked at Tam Chong Store in Lower Pä‘ia. A few months later, Itamura became a bookkeeper at Maui Dry Goods in Lower Pä‘ia. When Maui Dry Goods opened a liquor department, she was placed in charge of it. While at Maui Dry Goods, Itamura took on side jobs in order to support her family. She worked as a touring theater group organizer , an insurance salesperson, and a bookkeeper at another dry goods store. In 1937, Itamura opened Pä‘ia Liquor Store in Lower Pä‘ia. She married Masao Itamura in 1953. Her nephew took over the store after Itamura retired in 1972. As a retiree, Itamura enjoyed golfing and traveling. She died in 1991 at age eighty-five. In 1979 and 1980, Warren Nishimoto interviewed Itamura at her Lower Pä‘ia home for Stores and Storekeepers of Pä‘ia and Pu‘unënë, Maui. This compilation of the recollections of thirty-three individuals who were directly involved with stores serving Pä‘ia and Pu‘unënë provides researchers with firstperson accounts of the beginnings, maintenance, and decline of that role on the Valley Island. These accounts supplement existing literature on plantation life, add to the history of Maui and Hawai‘i, and contribute to the growing body of knowledge on entrepreneurship in America. 130 Talking Hawai‘i’s Story FAMILY I was born in Maui—Nähiku, under the waterfall, Honomü Waterfall. Both [parents were] from Hiroshima. My father came first. He came under contract to HC&S [Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Company]. He supposed to go back under three years’ contract, but he met my mother in Kula, you see. She was a widow at that time with two children, so my father married her. And then, I was the first child [of that marriage]. I had ten brothers and sisters, but five died. We moved to Ka‘elekü [Sugar Company], Häna plantation. I think that’s where they moved next. I was about ten or eleven. I was going to school already . But in between, I don’t know where they went. I don’t think they stayed in that waterfall place for long, you know. [After being fired from Häna plantation for labor organizing] he had to leave there and come to Käheka. Then, while he was there, there was another big strike all over Hawai‘i. Before that, nobody believed in striking. They just get kicked around, you know. So, my father joined and helped them. So he got kicked out again (laughs) from Käheka. Then we went to Lower Pä‘ia. He bought that small hotel in Lower Pä‘ia. Upstairs, maybe ten or eleven rooms, that’s all. To buy a hotel, he needed the cash. Those days, they had tanomoshi. You bid so much interest, and then, the highest bidder—that month—win that $50, or $60, or $100. If five persons at $20, that amounted to $100. He had [borrowed] $1,000 [from more than one tanomoshi]. He didn’t know how to cook or to run a hotel because he was a contractor and sugar planter. He had no experience in business. He took sick, and then the hotel went bankrupt. So, I had to work from that time, see? I paid all his bills. And my father owed so much money. If I don’t pay, it’s shame for me, see? I could not just let it go, so I had to pay. I had to quit high school. I had six months more to go. I used to take business, typewriting, and bookkeeping. But what I really wanted was to be a sugar technologist because that seems to be interesting. That’s math, you see? I used to like arithmetic. I was going to University of Hawai‘i. My girlfriend Elsie Kuramoto’s father wanted me...

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