Discover Nikkei

https://www.discovernikkei.org/en/interviews/clips/1593/

Interviews

1. Great grandfather working in Hawaii

2. Great grandparents' hotel business in Hawaii

3. Grandfather raised in the hotel business

4. Grandfather picked up by US Army

5. Grandfather's interrogations during World War II

6. Grandparents were incarcerated in Jerome, Arkansas

7. Grandfather's business in Hawaii while in camp

8. Finding his mother's high school valedictorian speech

9. Grandfather helping administration in camp

10. Grandfather Fujioka in Wailua

11. Growing up Japanese in Hawaii

12. Entering banking business

Fujioka,Robert T.

(b. 1952) Former banking executive, born in Hawaii

Grandfather raised in the hotel business

My grandfather was raised in the hotel business so he had to learn how to do everything, including bookkeeping and what not, and he could really run the hotel, I guess, by the age of 14. But at that time my great-grandparents wanted him to be educated in Japan so they sent him back to Japan so he was Kibei when he came back, and of course that would be one of the reasons why there would be adverse consequences to that later on his life after Pearl Harbor.

generations hotels Japanese Americans Kibei languages Nisei

Date: April 25, 2018

Location: California, US

Interviewer: John Esaki

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Robert Fujioka was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1952. He attended the University of Michigan earning a BA degree and earned an MBA from the University of Hawai'i. He has been in the banking industry since 1974 and currently serves as Vice Chair, Japanese American National Museum Board of Trustees, a Trustee of the Clarence T.C. Ching Foundation, and the First Hawaiian Bank Foundation. (November 2018)

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