North Shore NewsIf the walls of the Ishimoto Store could talk, we could have a more complete picture of the beginning of a Haleiwa family business that spanned four generations. Perhaps the walls could tell us who actually built them and answer a swarm of questions surrounding the history of Haleiwa’s Ishimoto Store.
Perhaps there were tales of a life that began in Hiroshima in 1872 when Saburo Ishimoto was born. He was just a teenager when famine and a war with China compelled peasants and tenant farmers to leave their villages for opportunities abroad. Immigrants, primarily from Hiroshima, Yamaguchi, Kumamoto and Fukuoka prefectures, emigrated to the Kingdom of Hawaii. Saburo no doubt saw many of the people in his village leave for Hawaii, including his older brother Niichi Ishimoto who had emigrated to Hawaii four years earlier. Saburo was 24 years old when he made the decision to emigrate. He and his 20-year-old wife Yone, who had given birth to their son Sumito, left their home in Hiroshima in 1896 to seek their fortune in Hawaii.
We don’t know the details of the lives of Saburo and Yone for the next two decades. They are believed to have moved to Haleiwa to grow vegetables possibly on land owned by the Weed family.