Mike Ashman came to Kaua‘i in 1940 to be one of radio station KTOH’s first announcers. The brand new station was owned and operated by The Garden Island, and was the brainchild of the late Charlie Fern, the long-time publisher
Mike Ashman came to Kaua‘i in 1940 to be one of radio station KTOH’s first announcers. The brand new station was owned and operated by The Garden Island, and was the brainchild of the late Charlie Fern, the long-time publisher and editor of The Garden Island.
Ashman left in 1941 prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor and returned in the late 1940s following the war, at the urging of Fern.
The Kaua‘i Historical Society has just published “Kauai – As It Was In the 1940s and ’50s” by the pioneer Kaua‘i radio announcer.The book provides an engrossing account of life in the days when radio first emerged as a broadcast medium on Kaua‘i.
Ashman colorfully recalls what life was like on the Garden Island when there was only about 5,000 cars, rather than the 50,000 of today, and how life was led in a society that mostly revolved around the doings of the sugar plantations that then ringed Kaua‘i’s coastline, rather than tourism.
Ashman was known in those days as “Ashie” – a name given to him by Fern due to possible confusion among the public with Mike Fern, his son and editor of the paper.
He and his wife Doris departed Kaua‘i in the early 1950s for a new career in the visitor industry and other endeavors. Today the couple split their year between a home in Princeville and one in eastern Washington and keep in close touch with kama‘aina friends from those now long-gone radio days.
