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 Fujioka in Wailua

My grandfather Fujioka was quite an entrepreneur himself. I don’t know how he did it but he somehow got out of the cane fields pretty early and he actually got the lease from the plantation to run the plantation store so he ran the plantation store (they had different camps at these plantations) so they went to Wailua on the north shore of Oahu, Wailua Sugar Company, and so they had the general store there in Japanese camp, but then they expanded and ran the general store for all the camps, and at the height of his business whatever history, they had three stores, a movie theater… anyway he was quite the entrepreneur. And so typical Japanese style, two brothers and the sister ran the store, and my father being the youngest, he was the first graduate from Wailua high school, and he was the first Fujioka to to go to college, and graduate from college and go to dental school, so they just pushed him up the next rung.

entrepreneurship Hawaii plantations stores 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)