Kona's old shops still thriving
| • | Kona 'heritage' Stores |
By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Staff Writer
HOLUALOA, Hawai'i — When Doris Yanagi was a young woman, her father opened a general store in this rural area of upcountry Kona. Now, 53 years later, Doris Place is an institution.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
So is Doris.
Eighty-eight-year-old Takashi Oda, right, chats with regular customer Dick Fowler at Paul's Place in Holualoa. Oda said the building dates back to 1900 and has had various owners. The store carries fresh produce, among other merchandise.
Eleven hours a day, seven days a week, Yanagi runs the one-room general store that hasn't changed much since the day her dad named it for her.
All day long, people stop in for a little of this, a bit of that. Corned beef hash. Crack seed. Two tall Steinlagers. A pack of Marlboros. Fresh-baked snacks. Soda crackers. Whatever gets you through the day without a trip to the mall.
Everyone chats for a minute. Doris has known most of the customers since they were children. They ask about the store, talk about the weather, call her aunty, tell her to keep the change. She sends them all on their way with a 73-year-old smile.
"It's a good life," Yanagi said. "I get to meet and talk with people all day long. I enjoy it. I wouldn't know what to do if I quit."
Kona has changed, but up here on the old Mamalahoa Highway, in the heart of coffee country, many people still buy things the old-fashioned way, from people they know.
The shopping centers and big-box stores are minutes away, but dozens of stores like Doris Place continue to thrive within a few miles of one another.
"They are a forgotten part of history," said Maile Melrose, a driving force behind the new "Guide to Kona Heritage Stores," which documents the history of general stores in what's known as "Kona Mauka" — small towns from Keopu to Kealia.
'Heritage' status
In all, 17 stores along the highway earned "heritage" status for having housed businesses continuously for more than 50 years (though in some cases, the businesses have changed hands, names and merchandise). Some, like Doris Place, haven't changed much at all; others have moved with the times, offering new products and services to stay alive. All are a testament to a way of life that refuses to die up here in the hills, Melrose said.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
"South Kona really hasn't changed that much over the years," she said. "There are a lot of old families here, and kids learn their habits young. Patterns of shopping just stuck with them, so the stores can still survive."
Charles Sasaki, 76, has run his Keauhou Store for 42 years, using his old-fashioned calculating machine because he doesn’t need any “fancy stuff.”
The store names tell a history of change. In the 1800s, Chinese and Hawaiian merchants dominated the Kona area. Many of the long-gone stores documented in the new guide have names to prove it: Ng Kin You, Manchu Chinese Store, Awana Store, Ah Sing. When Japanese immigrants moved into Kona Mauka around 1900, they took over the store-keeping with names like Fujihara, Ogata, Goto, Ikeda, Kimura, Kamigata.
The stores sold a little bit of everything as little towns sprang up quickly in the wake of sugar, coffee and cattle ranching that developed after the turn of the century. A 1910 ad for K. Yokoyama store brags that it had "dry goods, boots and shoes, hats, Japanese provisions, groceries, hardware, crockery, cigars, tobacco and Japanese drugs."
Some stores added a billiard table; others had an in-house barber. Many featured a speciality of the house: home-made poi, dried fish, crack seed. Later, some of them added gas pumps or taxi services. Today, many of the buildings that housed these stores are used as art galleries, coffee shops or snack bars.
Nearly every one had a front porch where folks would sit down, chat and watch the world go by, slowly. Out back, there was a view that stretched all the way past the coffee trees to the Pacific Ocean.
The idea for a guide to the stores grew out of a plan to write a history of the historical society's headquarters in the H.N. Greenwell Store, which operated from 1875 to the 1950s.
"From there, we made a decision to try to document the whole history of the stores along the highway," Melrose said. "Yosh Deguchi, who died in December, spearheaded the project, getting people together to do a series of oral histories or just get together to talk about the stores in the old days."
In all, the guide lists the locations of 83 stores, some of which have long since disappeared. Each offered something unique to its neighborhood. The earliest one on the then dirt highway may have been the W. Johnson Store, opened sometime around 1860.
At the T. Marumoto Store (1900-1940s), the family owned two horse-drawn wagons to haul goods to a nearby wharf. The J. Okamura store (1910-1966) had a family hotel and restaurant, too. The T. Abe Store (1920s-1970s) had a boarding house and bakery.
"Back then, people couldn't get to Kona for shopping; now they don't want to run down there whenever they need something," said Matsumi Komo, who has worked in the K. Komo store started by her husband's parents for more than 50 years.
At the store, you can buy a newspaper for 50 cents, a pair of rubber slippers for $2.55 or a pound of the family's own K. Komo-brand coffee for $12 (it sells for as high as $25 a pound elsewhere around Kona).
Farther down the line in Kealakekua, Sharmaine Kimura works in the business her great-grandparents started in 1926, H. Kimura Store.
Kimura, who just graduated from Southern Oregon University with a degree in biology, said it was her grandmother, 83-year-old Irene Kimura, who made the store something special by expanding it into a dry goods business.
Today the store has one of the largest fabric collections in the Islands.
"We've got a reputation all over the island and around the world for having the best quality fabrics," she said. "I guess I'll be the one to run it someday."
Changing with times
Many of the stores have managed to survive by changing with the times.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
The Y. Kimura Shoten started as a general store in 1914. Today, it specializes in lauhala products and weaving materials.
Employee Dottie Combs sits on the front porch of Kealakekua’s Grass Shack, where customers’ business cards hang from the ceiling.
Many of the storefronts in Holualoa date back as far as 1915 but are occupied today by artists, framers and craftsmen who have helped make the town a thriving arts community. The T. Kamigaki general store founded in 1948 in Kalukalu grew into a large supermarket in 1984. Teshima's Restaurant, famous for its Japanese cuisine, started frying hamburgers when the area was filled with American soldiers during World War II.
Lish Jens has owned Kealakekua's Grass Shack gift and handicraft store for more than 30 years along with husband Jonathan, but she knows the building's history goes back much further than that. In the 1960s, the building was the B. Usui Store; from the 1930s to 1950, it was the S. Ushiroda store; before that it was the Tokunaga Store.
"Right over here on the floor, you can see some of the resin from when this was a surf shop," she said. "Before that it was a boarding house, a theater rehearsal site, a shoe store and a grocery store. It's got a lot of lives."
