Maui picture bride's wishes keep her clan close
Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser
The Onaga-Yamashiro family relives the past at a picnic Friday at Ala Moana Beach Park.
By Rod Ohira
Advertiser Staff Writer
"Uncle Jimmy" Higa dancing with a pig at the first Onaga-Yamashiro reunion party in 1954 is a still a favorite memory of storytellers at the family's get-togethers. But the story got better last Friday when a photograph of the event was rediscovered in an album brought to a reunion picnic at Ala Moana Park.
Through her nine children and 32 grandchildren, a fourth generation of Goze Ahagon Onaga Yamashiro's extended family — which grew to 49 with the birth of Liana Goze Meyer in New Jersey shortly before midnight Thursday — will come to know the stories, recipes and customs that has kept the clan unusually close, even by Hawai'i standards, for nearly eight decades.
First marriage: Sukeushi Onaga Second marriage: Jiro Yamashiro
"We have a big family, but when we were growing up, everyone had a big family," said Gayle Hideko Gilbert, one of five Yamashiro sisters who shared the same birth mother with four Onaga children. "What makes ours unique, I think, is we're a cohesive unit because of our mom's wish for our family to be close. Fortunately, all the brothers-in-law and cousins get along."
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Goze Ahagon
Children-spouse — Shizuko Onaga-Charles Nakamoto; James Sukeichiro Onaga-Adele Taba; Lillian Toyoko Onaga-Paul Nakanishi; Sumiko Onaga-Kiyoshi Higa.
Children-spouse — Betty Hisako Yamashiro-Vernon Chang; Tomiko Yamashiro-James Higa; Gayle Hideko Yamashiro-John Meyer/Dr. Fred Gilbert Jr. (both deceased); Jayne Setsuko Yamashiro-Stanley Teruya; Amy Midori Yamashiro-Bernard Matano (deceased).
Goze, who died in 1971, lived to see her wishes fulfilled.
Her legacy is rooted in the early 20th-century sugar plantation camps of Wailuku and Happy Valley, Maui, where she overcame the deaths of two husbands to raise nine children. She came to Maui in 1919 from Shuri, Okinawa, as a 19-year-old picture bride for plantation laborer Sukeushi Onaga, who was 20 years older.
Onaga died in 1926. He was the father of Shizuko Nakamoto, 80, of Lomita, Calif., and James Sukeichiro Onaga, 79; Lillian Toyoko Nakanishi, 77; and Sumiko Higa, 75; all of O'ahu.
The Onaga children moved from the Wailuku camp to a two-story house in lower Happy Valley when their mother married Jiro Yamashiro, a former plantation luna (supervisor) who practiced dentistry, though unlicensed. Yamashiro fathered five daughters — Betty Hisako Chang, 72; Tomiko Higa, 71; Gilbert, 69; Jayne Setsuko Teruya, 67, and Amy Midori Matano, 65. All live on O'ahu except Teruya, who resides in Palos Verdes, Calif.
"The Onaga sisters brought us up, and Ichiro (James) was the man of the house, a samurai," Tomiko Higa said. "The Onagas provided stability and taught us how to behave. They have more reserved personalities than us Yamashiros.
"I think that's because by the time we were growing up, mom had mellowed. I can tell you when we went to the Maui County Fair, she'd give us 25 cents each to spend for a whole day. But when Midori was old enough to go, she got $5 to spend."
The eldest child was 17 and the youngest a year old when their mother lost her second husband. She was 37 years old, and the children were expected to find odd jobs to help the family.
"By age 10, all the siblings made a contribution to the family coffers," Betty Chang recalled. "We did housework, picked kiawe beans for ranchers to use as cattle feed. The income all went to mother, who used the funds to maintain the needs of the family. For Christmas, we all received new shoes and a dress that she either bought or sewed."
Special treats were making sugar candy from kamani nut seeds and going to a movie once a year on New Year's Day.
By 1954, the youngest of her children was attending the University of Hawai'i. To Goze, her three-bedroom house, once so crowded, now felt empty. "The Christmas holidays were near, and grandma wanted her family to share this idyllic setting once again before it was lost forever," said Vernon Chang, Betty's husband who is a former Hawai'i Youth Correctional Facility administrator.
The 1955 New Year's Day party, attended by seven of the nine children, was the last in the old house and the first of many family functions.
"We're fun-loving and like to organize," Tomiko Higa said. "There were eight of us (in Hawai'i) at the time and we each decided to host a holiday each year to keep the family together. Because of that, the first cousins all grew up together."
Tomi and James Higa have the New Year's Day party. Easter is celebrated at Sumiko and Kiyoshi Higa's home. Father's Day is at Lillian and Jimmy Nakanishi's residence, and Ichiro and Adele Onaga play host to obon festivities. Thanksgiving is at the Gilberts, and Christmas at the Changs. Zenwa and Fumiko Shima, adopted members of the family who were close friends with Jiro Yamashiro, used to play host of a "back-to-school" fun outing at Malaekahana when they worked for the Spalding Estate.
"Now that our kids are all grown up," Tomiko Higa said, "we go out together once a month. It's only for the retirees, 65 and over."
The sisters and Fumiko Shima also treat themselves to a Mother's Day outing without their spouses.
Goze's grandchildren also grew up with fond memories and stories of their own. Visiting Shizuko and Charles Nakamoto and their four children at their Coconut Island home in Kaneohe Bay was the outing third-generation family members remember best.
Charles Nakamoto was the maintenance mechanic for UH's Institute of Biology, and his family lived for 34 years on Coconut Island, which was accessible only by boat.
Joan Nakamoto Sugiyama, Shizuko's daughter, recalls that when she and her husband, Sam, were dating, he would drop her off at the pier and watch her make the crossing via motorboat.
"I'd signal Sam with my flashlight that I made it across safely," Joan Sugiyama said.
Judy Law, who is from Minnesota and is married to Joan's brother Gary, has been attending Onaga-Yamashiro parties since 1977. At first, chicken hekka and pork laulau did not appeal to her but now they are among her favorite foods.
Law and the Nakamoto family will never forget her first attempt at making laulau.
"I used tiger lily leaves instead of ti-leaves," she said. "We checked around before eating it to see if it was poisonous. After a while, we just ate it. I only recently found out it is poisonous. It's a wonder nobody died."
Because most of the sisters did "eyeball" cooking, there was a demand for a cookbook of family recipes. They put together a 123-page book and distributed it to family members in 1989. It is being updated this year.
Elaborate family reunions were held on the Mainland in 1969 and 1999. Starting with this year's reunion, family members have agreed to hold one every two years. The 2003 reunion will celebrate the final obon service in Goze's memory.
This year's activities, which included cooking demonstrations, a bowling tournament, picnic and obon service, will conclude tonight with a banquet at Hale Koa Hotel to be attended by 90 people.
Rubber slippers at the front door of family homes symbolize the welcome feeling of their get-togethers, said Gail Nakanishi Satsuma, Lillian Nakanishi's daughter.
"Whoever leaves first, takes the best slippers so those at the end have to take whatever's left," she said of people wearing look-alike footwear and going home with someone else's slippers. "But we know, it won't take long to return it since there's always a family function."
Rod Ohira can be reached by phone at 535-8181 or e-mail at rohira@honoluluadvertiser.com
