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By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist
There's a photo in Jean Misaki Matsuo's book that shows how her mother did the family laundry — by hand with a wooden scrub board in a galvanized wash tub. In the picture, the scrub board and wash tub are "conveniently" next to the faucet of a large water tank. Matsuo's father built the water tank by hand.
Matsuo's book is filled with details of a work-intensive yet simple and beautiful life in a bygone era.
Jean Matsuo can be reached at PO Box 1051, Kane'ohe, HI 96744. Telephone: 235-1863 The cost of the book is $12.50.
She grew up in the 1930s in Kona at a time when children followed their parents into the coffee fields to help during harvest time. Hard work was nothing to be feared. Families lived off the bounty of their home gardens, fish they caught from the ocean and the generosity of neighbors. Nothing was ever thrown away; when something was broken, it was repaired. And just about everything they owned, from dresses to slippers to dolls, was homemade.
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It's fitting, then, that the book is homemade as well. Matsuo, who is 75, wrote "Dear Okaasan, It's Pick Coffee Time Again" in longhand before her son put it into a computer. With the encouragement of her three children, she self-published the memoir of her mother's life.
"We were not poor. We had plenty to eat. We had plenty fruits and vegetables from the land and lots of fish from the ocean. Only we never had money."
The details of the Yoshida family life in Kona make our modern world seem opulent and shallow.
When the family moved down the mountain to be closer to the main road, Matsuo's father moved the entire farm house by taking it apart up on the hill, bringing down each board, and rebuilding the home on a lower spot.
"My mother and our neighbor lady, their job was to take out the nails. One by one. They took out the nails and they kept it to use again on the other house,"
Matsuo says she always wanted to be a writer and that her friends in high school thought she'd write a book some day. Still, she's stunned by the response she has gotten to the project she calls "this simple little book."
"It took me a while to write because I have arthritis in my fingers and I can't type for beans because my mind is faster than my fingers."
Now, she has a shoebox full of letters from people who have read her "simple little book" and found it a pathway to their own fond memories.
"I'm really amazed, and I'm very grateful and actually, I feel very humble. It's a humbling feeling to hear my friends and people telling me to write another book because they enjoyed it. I never believed it could happen to me."
The book follows Matsuo's mother from her early childhood on Maui in the 1900s through her years in Kona and then, in her old age, to her O'ahu apartment when she moved to be closer to her children. Throughout the pages, Matsuo recounts the values of hard work, gratitude and kindness her mother taught and lived.
I reach 91 years old and although my body getting little bit weak, I can still walk ... Only thing, I cannot hear too good — read "tsunbo" (hard of hearing). But, I never worry because I can still hear the good stuff. The bad things no need hear anyway — not important.
Matsuo's mother stayed sharp and productive all through her life. Even in her last years, she could add up the cost of her groceries as she went around the store and have the exact amount of money ready by the time she got to the cashier.
"The only thing she had hard time was the percentage," Matsuo said. "I used to teach her. She was already 90 and she had the liver cancer in her, but she wanted to go to school still yet so I used to teach her decimal points and algebra, simple kind that I know because I don't know much, too. But she still wanted to learn."
When you get "makule," you "poho" (waste) time getting angry and upset about small stuff. Not too many years left to live — just be "arigatai" you able to live this long. Even though, like anybody else, I have many "kanashii" (sad) times, I like to remember only the happy times.
Matsuo's book is only about those happy times, though she alludes to struggles in her mother's life and in her own. It's her belief that holding on to the happy times helps get you through the bad days.
I remember we smiled a lot — we were young and carefree and the skies were always soft and beautiful, as were our pure, innocent hearts.
Matsuo's book is available at Mamo Howell's store (Howell is her dear friend from Kona days), at Kuakini Hospital and, in true old-time Kona-style, from Matsuo herself.
She's in her second printing and thinking about writing another book; this one, about her father, the man who could build anything, fix anything and cook the best chicken hekka in Kona.
Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.
