He actually went back to the Big Island and found his future wife, whose last name I believe was Higashi, but I don’t know anything about her family other than that they had a reputation for making very good poi on the Big Island. Anyway, she went back with him to Maui and together they scraped enough money to start their own hotel. So they started the Kagawa hotel in Kahului or Wailuku in Maui. Must have been Kahului. Anyway, it was the only Japanese hotel and so they did pretty well because there were obviously a lot of immigrants coming in from Japan and I guess at that time there was even trade that was developing. Anyway, he did pretty well as a hotel owner and he and his wife had four children.
Date: April 25, 2018
Location: California, US
Interviewer: John Esaki
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum
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