Pioneer Japanese emigrant Bunkichi Murata Twenty-four-year-old Bunkichi Murata was among the first Japanese emigrants to Hawai‘i, debarking at Honolulu Harbor aboard the British ship Scioto on June 20, 1868, and arriving at Nawiliwili Landing, Kaua‘i shortly thereafter. On Kaua‘i, he
Pioneer Japanese emigrant Bunkichi Murata
Twenty-four-year-old Bunkichi Murata was among the first Japanese emigrants to Hawai‘i, debarking at Honolulu Harbor aboard the British ship Scioto on June 20, 1868, and arriving at Nawiliwili Landing, Kaua‘i shortly thereafter.
On Kaua‘i, he at first worked in the fields of Lihu‘e Plantation at Hanama‘ulu but was later promoted to luna, or supervisor, the first Japanese to attain that position.
And after eight or nine years with the plantation, he left to become a cook, first in the home of Lihue Plantation manager Paul Isenberg and afterwards at Hale Nani, William Hyde Rice’s estate in Lihue. It was during this time that he took the name Arai Bungo.
While employed at Hale Nani about 1878 or 1879, he met and courted Lucy Hanapi, a Hawaiian girl of royal blood and a cousin of King Lunalilo.
But Lucy’s brother, Rev. Robert Puuiki, the minister of the Waioli Church in Hanalei and the Ko‘olau-Huiia Church at Anahola, and a judge for Lihu‘e and Kapa‘a, strongly objected to the courtship. He believed Bungo’s station in life was unacceptably below that of his royal sister. Nevertheless, the couple were married in Honolulu and were blessed with four children: Virginia, Mrs. Elizabeth Ewaliko, Mrs. Lily Hugher, and George Bungo.
Arai Bungo also cooked for the Rice family’s Lihue Hotel on Rice Street and at the old Lihue Hospital, which was located on Ahukini Road.
In his later years, Bungo cooked for George Norton Wilcox at Papalinahoa on Nawiliwili Bay with Yonekichi Sakuma, another 1868 immigrant, and he served as Japanese interpreter at the old Lihue Courthouse, where Kaua‘i High School now stands.
Arai Bungo died in 1925 and is buried in the cemetery on the grounds of the Ko‘olau-Huiia Protestant Church in Anahola.
The Kondos and the Ahanas are among his descendants.
