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

Great grandparents' hotel business in Hawaii

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.

business economics Hawaii hotels management United States

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)