Anahola postmistress retires after 43 years ANAHOLA — Lily Yamamoto closed the chapter on 43 (and a half) years of work with the U.S. Postal Service on Thursday. For some of the longtime patrons at the Anahola Post Office,Yamamoto’s departure
Anahola postmistress retires after 43 years
ANAHOLA — Lily Yamamoto closed the chapter on 43 (and a half) years of work with the U.S. Postal Service on Thursday.
For some of the longtime patrons at the Anahola Post Office,Yamamoto’s departure meant the end of a legacy. A steady stream of well-wishers flowed through the rural postal station, sometimes overflowing onto the sidewalk outside as they bestowed gifts of flowers and leis and penned notes of mahalo and appreciation for the postmistress whose four-plus decades of service centered on Anahola.
Yamamoto’s father, Robert Hamamura, is credited with starting postal service for Anahola residents in the late 1930s.
“I asked my mother, but she can’t remember the exact date,” Lily Yamamoto said to those who wanted to know more about the legacy. “I think it was 1934, or was it ’36?”
Yamamoto said she knows it was before World War II, because her father was interned, as were many Japanese Americans.
“He didn’t have to go to those intern camps on the mainland, but they took him to the Wailua jail because he was working for the post office,” she said.
Back when Hamamura started postal service for Anahola, “they didn’t have post offices. It was just” an extension of Anahola Store, Yamamoto recalled.
Prominently featured on the back wall, an oil painting depicts the old Anahola Store in the days when it was located across the highway from its current location. To the left is the familiar flagpole that is symbolic of post offices, its American flag flying briskly.
Hamamura started in postal work as a clerk. Later, as services expanded, he was installed as the postmaster for Anahola.
His wife, Shimayo, was a clerk. And when Yamamoto was in high school, she, too was hired as a postal clerk. She eventually succeeded Hamamura when he retired in 1971.
As each patron stopped to chat with Yamamoto Thursday for one last time as the postmistress, there was the usual, “Now, you going Vegas, eh?”
Yamamoto’s quiet reply was, “No, I’m going to do what I haven’t been able to do until now. Maybe travel a little, but my mother is too frail. Spend some time with my children and grandchildren.
“Maybe I’ll take a ceramics class. That’s always been my dream. And there’s a lot of things to sew.”
As patrons were introduced to Yamamoto’s successor, Russell Simpliciano, they jokingly asked if he’d get their mail to them like “Lily used to.”
During Yamamoto’s tenure as postmistress, Simpliciano was hired as a clerk and worked under her supervision for several years before moving on in the postal system.
That was 17 years ago. “I feel like I’ve come full circle,” Simpliciano said. “She was my boss, and now it’s the start of a new era.”
Transferring from the Pakala Post Office, Simpliciano took over the reins of the Anahola Post Office this morning.
“None of my children entered the Postal Service,” Yamamoto said. “But, with Russell, it’s the next best thing, since I hired him and worked with him.”
Her memories of them working together include spending six months working out of a trailer after the postal building burned down.
A customer expressed disbelief in learning of Yamamoto’s final day.
“She’s one of a kind. No can find this kind people any more,” said the aged lady, nodding her head sadly.
Staff photographer Dennis Fujimoto can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 253).
