Every Store Has a Story: K. Takata Store in Hawi
By Hadley Catalano
Shiro Takata had no interest in working in his father’s grocery, K. Takata Store, during his childhood in North Kohala in the 1930s and 40s. He’d much rather play sports outside, and as the fourth son of Keizo and Hatsuko Takata, he didn’t have the same chores and obligations as his older brothers.
“I was the least dependable,” Takata joked about his work ethic at the time. “But after I graduated high school in 1948 my family wanted me, no other sibling, to work in the store. I was surprised.”
A labor of love, Shiro’s parents and older brothers were ready to pass the torch to the younger generation. The store, which today serves as an important narrative and testament to Kohala’s resilient history, had already been serving the community for 25 years.
The store’s history (which was compiled by Kim Takata and the North Kohala Cookbook Committee) dates back to the beginning of the 1900s, after John Hind engineered the construction of the Kohala ditch to feed his sugar canefields at Hawi Mill and Plantation in Ho‘ea. It was shortly after the community began to experience a vast modernization with improved roads, hydroelectric plants, and electricity that a young Japanese salesman settled in Kohala.
Keizo Takata, selling imported traditional kimono, went door to door at the camps offering his wares until he meet his future wife Hatsuko Fujimori, who was working as a server for the Hind family. The couple soon married in 1922 and Keizo, speaking little English, found his perfect match in his intelligent and hard-working wife. A year later the blossoming businessman opened a small shop, selling kimono in the town center of Hawi (where the Cherry Blossoms building stands today). Keeping up with the changing times, the couple soon adopted Western ways and supplied the developing community with more up-to-date styles and footwear, and began offering canned goods and small merchandise items.
Aware that the Bank of Hilo had recently foreclosed on the two-story Hamada Hotel down the street, Keizo seized the opportunity to purchase the broken down, collapsing building. And with the help of his wife, who translated and negotiated the sale, the pair settled and signed on the property while expecting their fourth child.
Wasting no time, the duo renovated the building and opened K. Takata Store, servicing the Kohala community in what is now the Bamboo Restaurant and Gallery in Hawi town.
“There were plenty of people and activity in Kohala at that time,” Shiro Takata recalled, noting that his parents raised their seven children in the store, living in the old hotel. “Nobody traveled so we did the majority of our business at the plantations. We would drive to camps in our old Ford truck, take orders, and make deliveries.”
Originally the store was designed for counter service, customers would enter and order items displayed on shelves. Over the years the Takatas, taking note from growing businesses in Hilo, adapted to a self service shop, selling strictly groceries.
While the store was running at full speed, Pearl Harbor had a devastating impact on the family. Keizo, being Issei, not an American national, was forced into a Japanese internment camp on the mainland. The eldest son was drafted into the war, leaving Hatsuko and the six remaining children to run the store and manage on their own.
“In an attempt to make more money, my mother began making kimono again for the new service men, as a designer gift for them to take home to their girlfriends and wives,” Takata said. “When my father returned he wasn’t the same, he has lost his drive and ambition and my mother became the new ‘boss’.”
So upon Shiro’s graduation and his parent’s call to duty in the family business, he picked up the slack, taking over for his elder brothers who were burnt out on the business.
“I thought to myself, if I’m going to be stuck here, I might as well make the most of it and do the best I can,” as he explained how he adopted the motto, ‘Everyone should leave the building smiling.’
Armed with a new objective, it took Shiro only a few years to meet Clara Ogi, the owner of Pualani, a beauty shop a few storefronts down, who would make his life and business even more successful.
In the mid-1940s Clara, not yet 20, with the help of her brother’s money from the family’s coffee farm in Holualoa, bought a closed beauty shop in Hawi and soon transformed it into a gainful commercial operation.
The couple wed in 1955 and continued to work at their respective jobs, while living in the Takata store building. Two years later their first son Rayton was born, followed by Jerry in 1959. During this time it became increasingly difficult to conduct business in Kohala due to the closure of Māhukona port (items were now trucked from Hilo). Keizo and Hatsuko were ready to retire to O‘ahu and kept insisting that Shiro buy the business. It was Clara who took her earnings from Pualani Beauty Shop and invested in Takata Store.
“She made the business possible, she was my biggest supporter,” Shiro said of his wife, who helped the store thrive with her friendly demeanor, community investment, and love of the family business.
“My mother was the backbone of this store,” Jerry, who is now the store manager and purchasing agent explained of his mother who won the 2011 Citizen of the Year award from the North Kohala Merchants Association. “My father did the business end, however this store was my mother’s life. She worked here everyday and had to retire last year due to her health, or she would have kept on working.”
When Jerry and his brother returned from college on the mainland, Shiro explained that they followed a similar path to his own, taking up a later interest in the store and observing the day-to-day activities of the business, an interest that made their father happy.
The business grew and developed and in 1992 the Takata family relocated the store to a family property a short distance from their current location, up Akoni Pule Highway. The new building brought with it a fresh face to the grocery store, ample parking, a wider range of products, and a larger volume of merchandise for the isolated neighborhoods of Kohala.
“We were very excited about the change, never could have imagined it. We wanted to be the best convenience store we could be,” Shiro said. “People here are so appreciative of the business, this is the joy of serving this community.”
Takatas have been acting as any good business in a small town would, supporting the youth of Kohala, providing donations, and offering a Banzai Card to support community projects. The small mom and pop shop has clearly expanded, now offering locally grown produce, a variety of stock according to customer demands, and employs 20 people, including the next Takata generation, Rayton’s son Jake.
“There is a lot of hard work that goes into this store,” Jerry explained. “Like the past in Kohala we never know what the future will bring. We have loyal employees and customers and we are proud to be able to serve Kohala as a community store.”
To contact the K. Takata Store: 808.889.5261
Contact writer Hadley Catalano: hadleycatalano AT gmail DOT com
