Interviews

1. Teacher who helped with lisp

2. Spending time with children

3. Ethnic diversity

4. Prom during the war

5. Decision to run for governor

6. Being fair

7. Influence of veterans

8. Role of Hawaii internationally

Ariyoshi,George

(b.1926) Democratic politician and three-term Governor of Hawai'i

Prom during the war

I was sophomore when the war broke out. All of the sophomores, we had hardly any social life. Our first junior prom that we had, we were… We had our prom in our cafeteria. We had moved all of our tables off to the side. And the cafeteria there was a very old cafeteria. The floor was very worn, so you know, it wasn’t very smooth—lumps along the lumber there. But we tried to darken the room as best as we can, and that was our junior prom.

I recall our senior prom. We still had curfew, we still had to be off the street by 6 o’clock. And we went to the Mormon Tabernacle on Beretania Street. And we pulled all of the drapes so that it was completely dark and a very dim light. And our senior prom was from 1 o’clock to 3:30.

And so, that’s the kind of social life that we had. We didn’t have very much activities going on. And so a lot of us, our friends that got together and we’d spend time together from one friend's house to another friend's house on weekends. So we developed a closeness among some of the friends that we had in high school.

dance social life World War II

Date: December 15, 2003

Location: Hawai`i, US

Interviewer: Art Hansen

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum.

Interviewee Bio

George Ariyoshi was born in Honolulu in 1926. He overcame a childhood speech defect to enter the Military Intelligence Service language school after World War II and served the United States in Tokyo’s ruins. Returning home from occupied Japan, he moved to Michigan where he received undergraduate and law degrees.

He married Jean Hayashi in Hawai`i and, between 1954 and 1986, held elective offices there as a Democrat. He served three terms as Hawai`i’s governor, the first Japanese American nationwide to govern a state. By his own definition, Governor Ariyoshi was “a social liberal and a fiscal conservative.” The title of his 1997 memoir, With Obligation to All, summed up his personal and political philosophies. (December 2003)