It’s [Wailea Milling Company] the first, and I think only, independent sugar mill in Hawai‘i. Unfortunately, during the war years, World War II, my dad had to stay out of the directorship because he was an alien. He was being interrogated by the FBI and so on. And during that time, Hakalao Sugar Company approached the Costas to sell and of course my dad couldn’t say no because he was really not a director at that point in time and so they sold the sugar mill. Today, the only thing that’s left there is the safe, the huge safe that they had built and some of the houses because my dad had started this Wailea Village for all the workers and he had brought in several people from Hiroshima to work on the plantation.
Date: May 31, 2006
Location: Hawai‘i, US
Interviewer: Akemi Kikumura Yano
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum
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