Talking Hawai`i's Story: Oral Histories of an Island People

RECOLLECTIONS FROM THE WINDWARD SIDE

EDITH ANZAI YONENAKA RECOLLECTIONS FROM THE WINDWARD SIDE My mama very seldom went to town, but my father used to do his month’s shopping there. Used to buy rice—and that’s two 100-pound bags of rice— one big tub of miso, tubful of shöyu, and crackers. He used to buy crackers by the case. And some canned stuff, sugar and salt, I suppose. I remember the good things, like the can of cookies that he used to buy once in a while. Edith Anzai Yonenaka, the fourth of ten children, was born in Kahana Valley , O‘ahu, in 1919. Her father, a sugarcane farmer, and her mother, a homemaker , were emigrants from Fukushima, Japan. The Anzais lived in a housing area called Tanaka Camp. In August 1941, Yonenaka and members of her family started the Ka‘a‘awa Vegetable Stand, later renamed Ka‘a‘awa Store, which prospered with the patronage of military personnel during World War II. She married Harold Yonenaka in 1952. That same year, she began a twenty -eight-year career as Ka‘a‘awa’s postmistress. Retired in 1980, she spent her time helping the Ka‘a‘awa Community Association, tending her garden, and selling beauty products. Edith Yonenaka died in 1994. Yonenaka was interviewed by Michi Kodama-Nishimoto for COH’s Five Life Histories (1983). Kodama-Nishimoto found her to be a warm, generous woman, devoted to her family and community. KAHANA VALLEY [Kahana Valley] was green, with all the sugarcane. On the mountainside was a lot of guava trees, some mangoes, and mountain apple. There was a stream, just about in the middle of the valley, coming down to the ocean. 296 Talking Hawai‘i’s Story When you look up in the valley, [our camp] was on the left side. There was one Filipino family for a while. There was one Korean family, too, and about three or four Japanese families in the camp. The rest were all Filipino bachelors. The bachelors’ homes were just long homes with rooms, and then they had another building right below that, [which] was the kitchen. Then on the right-hand side [of the valley] there was another little village there where a lot of other people lived. They were mostly Hawaiians. They fished and had taro patches. Down there in the bay, they used to catch a lot of akule. By the Crouching Lion [a point overlooking Kahana Bay], not way at the top but the lower part there, a Hawaiian man from inside the valley would go to look for the fish. When he saw the school of fish coming in, he’d call out. As soon as we hear his voice, we all come out from the valley. Then all the fishermen with their boats and their nets would surround the fish. Everybody would help pull the net in. Depending on the catch, everybody [or] every family would get some fish. Then whatever was extra, they took to the market in town [Honolulu]. We used to have bridges so that we could go from one side of the valley to the other. I remember crossing that bridge near our camp. I had [a] baby Kahana Bay and Valley, Punalu‘u at right, 1931 (O. S. Picher, Hawai‘i State Archives). Yonenaka, “Recollections from the Windward Side” 297 on my back. I slipped and I fell in the water and it was above my head. Good thing it [the stream] wasn’t too wide, so I was able to walk out to the shallow area. The bridge was just timber, maybe ten-by-ten or twelve-by-twelve [feet]. When there’s a heavy rain and the stream gets flooded, the water would wash that bridge away. The camp boss got tired of going way down the stream looking for it, so he used to tie it with pieces of wire to a tree. TANAKA CAMP [We lived] in Tanaka Camp. We called him [Tanaka] the camp boss. They [the Filipino bachelors] were hired actually by the camp boss. When he got through with all his work, then he would let them work for the other farmers. That’s how my father used to get help from the workers there, plowing the field with the horse, and planting, and then harvesting. [My father] leased land from the Kahuku Plantation. [At first] he grew rice [and] he had a rice...