By Rod Ohira
Advertiser Staff Writer

On Aug. 11, 1941, a 16-year-old boy reported to the mailroom at Bishop National Bank of Hawaii for his first day of work.

With credit for 13 months of military service, James "Jimmy" Yee is in his 61st year of employment with the same bank, now known as First Hawaiian Bank.

"To me, it's nothing out of the ordinary," said Yee, an assistant vice president in the audit division who celebrated his 77th birthday Saturday. "I don't regret having worked this long. I like my job and I think I'm doing good work. It's still fun, and I'm still learning new things."

Yee's wife, the former Juanita Won, died 23 years ago.

"If she were still living," he said, "I would have retired long ago."

Even more remarkable than his long tenure at the bank is the fact that Yee, who spoke little English when he came to Honolulu from Shanghai in 1937, achieved his success in banking with less than four years of schooling here.

Jimmy Yee, right, a 61-year employee of First Hawaiian, with BancWest Chairman Walter Dods. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

Noting that a small, skinny Chinese boy unable to speak proper English would stick out as a target for bullies in his Gulick Avenue neighborhood in Kalihi, Yee quickly learned the language. "I had to learn fast for self-preservation," he said.

Yee learned the banking business in the same way.

"I don't think I could have learned so much by observing," he said. "Somebody's got to show you how to do it. I don't understand a lot of things so I always ask questions. I'm No. 1 for asking questions.

"The people that work at the bank have always helped me to learn."

Yee worked at United Bazaar, his family's Chinatown curio shop on Hotel Street, until he was hired by Bishop National Bank. The job paid $90 a month, which included a $15 bonus, for a 44-hour work week. The mailroom was in the basement of the five-story Damon Building, on the site of the downtown First Hawaiian Center.

"I was given a chance," Yee said of the job, "to be in the right place at the right time."

During the week after the Dec. 7 attack on Pearl Harbor, the young mail clerk was sent to work at the bank's Hickam branch. "I went there as a bookkeeper," Yee recalled. "I sorted checks and posted transactions into individual accounts. They gave me five to 10 minutes of instruction on how to use the (Burroughs bookkeeping) machine. That was it."

Yee was paid $10 more to work at Hickam.

"The defense workers came to cash paychecks and I saw that one week pay for them was bigger than mine for a month," he said.

In retrospect, Yee noted: "Money is not everything. If money meant a lot to me, I would have left the bank long ago. From the time I was at Hickam, I thought I had a future and I liked the people. That's why I stayed. Never had regrets."

When he was drafted in mid-1945, Yee was working as a teller. Only men were tellers in those days, he said.

Yee did his basic training at Schofield and was assigned to the Army's fiscal office at Fort Shafter. When he returned to work at the bank, Yee learned that his employers had been depositing the difference in pay between what he earned as a civilian and as an Army private into his account for 13 months. He used the extra money to purchase 10 shares of bank stock.

Besides on-the-job training, Yee pushed his own self-improvement. It was while taking a night-school course on bookkeeping at the University of Hawai'i that he met his wife.

Yee's big break came after he had been promoted to assistant manager. The bank had an airport branch — it was a portable building on a gas station lot off Lagoon Drive — and Yee was asked to be the manager.

"When I thought about it, I said, 'There it is, Jimmy, a chance to move up,' " Yee said.

For the next 10 years, Yee managed both the Moanalua and Airport branches of the bank. Then he joined the audit division, where he has worked since 1974.

"Jimmy is in a league by himself," said Walter Dods, chairman and chief executive officer of BancWest Corp./First Hawaiian Bank. "It's just amazing that he started as a young immigrant teenager in the mailroom and put together a 60-year career."

Marilyn Seely, director of the state Health Department's Executive Office on Aging, said few people in Hawai'i continue working past their retirement age. "In Hawai'i, the retirement age is closer to 62," Seely said. "Few people are still working full-time at 76 and it's very rare for someone to be with the same company for over 60 years."

Outside of work, Yee enjoys golfing and ballroom dancing. "Maybe," he said with a smile, "I retire next year if I have a wife."

Reach Rod Ohira at 535-8181 or rohira@honoluluadvertiser.com.