Talking Story with Hawaii’s Living History: Helen Hiroko Hongo

Driving through the far end of Waikiki, I remember my childhood. I remember swimming near the Natatorium with my Baban (grandma, in Japanese) when I was young. She in her straw hat, sunglasses and strand of faux pearls, just an arms length away from me, teaching me to swim. I remember my mother and her siblings sitting on the green picnic bench talking story together on the grassy area just up the concrete stairs from the beach. Even now, this memory is a thread that connects me to my mother, and her family, and to the years they lived in Waikiki.

My mother was born, Helen Hiroko Nishimoto on June 26, 1929 and grew up in a beach cottage 20 feet from the water’s edge of Waikiki Beach, in an area called “Public Baths Beach” or simply—“Publics” —as known by the localsin Honolulu. Here, sandwiched between the War Memorial Natatorium and the original Waikiki Aquarium, Helen lived with her mother and father (originally from Hiroshima, Japan), along with her siblings; two older brothers and an older sister.

Masako Ota Nishimoto and Harry Hajime Nishimoto, Helen’s parents, ran the Public Baths Concession from the late1920’s until around 1946. Masako cooked most of the food on the menu: plate lunches, beef and curry stew, sushi and macaroni salad. Meanwhile, Helen’s father Harry oversaw the books and accounting. Helen and her siblings Edith, Harry and Joseph helped in the concession as well as in the adjacent building where towels, bathing suits and lockers were also rented to beachgoers.

As the youngest child, Helen remembers her childhood with fondness and warmth:

“We were in the water every chance we got, from morning until night. I was the youngest and played alone a lot. My brothers and sister were older and had their own friends, or had to work in the store more. I remember the beach boys…Chuck-Along (Arthur Lee), Nick Tevis and Slim (Kazuo Okado). They used to throw me into the water…that’s how I learned to swim. And I would go to the old Zoo, all by myself, because you know, it was safe back then. No body locked their doors. I remember, I think I was about 6 years old, when I was sick or tired, I would lie down on the shelves, under the counters at the concession stand, because my mother and father were always working at the store.

I would “visit” the Waikiki Aquarium, sometimes several times a day, and the lady who clocked everyone in, she knew me, so she would just let me in. There used to be ponds near the entrance, with turtles surrounded by a wall, and I would climb on the wall (which wasn’t allowed, you know) and fall in all the time! And the caretakers would be feeding the fish in the back and I’d go and help them, and I would stay and eat lunch with them. Matsuo and Nellie were the caretakers and they would share their lunch with me. We would eat rice, eggs and Vienna sausage. I still remember.”

Though her childhood was idyllic and the stuff of Hawaiian dreams, she and her family experienced some of the atrocities of World War II firsthand. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, innocent Japanese Americans all over the United States became suspect, and many—leaders, businessmen and teachers especially—were detained in internment camps in Hawaii as well as on the mainland. Despite historical accounts which document that Hawaii’s Japanese Americans were not interned, Helen recounts her family’s experience:

“They took him during work hours. The soldiers came to the store with bayonnettes and Papa was in his swim trunks. He always dressed like that, only in his shorts, and always with a big cigar. Did you know they called him “Balloon”? That was his nickname because he was short and stout! Anyway, they took him when he was walking home from the store, with a cigar box full of the day’s cash. The next day Baban (my Grandmother) found out somehow, that they had taken him to Sand Island to interrogate him. After three or four days he came home on the bus. Then a few days later, they took him again. He was interned in Arizona and New Mexico. And I think he was gone for about a year and half.”

In 1943, Harry senior returned from internment and he and Masako continued living in Honolulu, eventually turning over the bid for the Public Baths Concession stand to their eldest son, Harry Jr. In 1972 Harry Nishimoto died at the age of 73, but Masako Nishimoto lived until she was 97 and actively participated in the lives of her twenty-one grand and great-grandchildren.

Helen Nishimoto went on to become Helen Hiroko Hongo, after marrying my father, Manabu Hongo, a Hilo boy, in 1952. By 1970, my parents had three daughters born to them, of which I am the last. We are, all of us, blessed to still have Mom—who turns 80 this year—and Dad 85, still with us. We three daughters all live here on Oahu, along with my parent’s nine grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Though each of us has inherited different loves from my parents, I have inherited my mother’s love of the ocean. And just like her, every chance we get, my children and I are in the water, creating new memories of growing up in Hawaii.

Read more about the Waikiki Natatorium.

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