Interview with Sam Uyehara

• Other Authors: Uyehara, Sam, Nishimoto, Warren
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1986
• Subjects: Family Life; Hotels and Restaurants; Land and Ownership; Plantation Life; Sports; Ford Island
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10125/30440

The proprietor of Smile Cafe talks about his childhood and schooling in Pepeekeo and Papaikou on the Big Island; father's kompang (group sugar cultivation) contract; chores and summer work; Maukaloa home and neighbors; plantation baseball; Pepeekeo Plantation carpentry work; move to Honolulu; construction work; Makanoe Lane home leased from Magoon; and surrounding neighborhood. He also discusses the opening of Smile Cafe on former Aloha Park land; lease and later purchase of land; remodeling; employees and customers; menu and suppliers; post-Prohibition bar; Quarterback Club; December 7, 1941; wartime customer boom of defense workers and soldiers; Japanese and Okinawan internees; post-war Ford Island cafeteria; 1947 government condemnation of land; move to Kapiolani Boulevard; AJA (Americans of Japanese Ancestry) baseball league; and cafe closing and retirement in 1962. sugar plantation worker, carpenter, construction worker, restaurant owner; Okinawan; male Interview conducted in English. State