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.
Date: April 25, 2018
Location: California, US
Interviewer: John Esaki
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum
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