In 1940, with a couple of years experience as a radio announcer at KSAN in San Francisco under his belt, California-born Mike Ashman (1921-2018) joined Kaua‘i’s first radio station — KTOH (Kaua‘i Territory of Hawai‘i) — which began broadcasting on May 8, 1940, on Ahukini Road.
During Ashman’s one-year stint as an announcer at KTOH, he broadcasted music, news and sports Monday through Saturday, with Sundays being dedicated to broadcasting live performances of local musical groups from KTOH’s studio.
Ashman also entertained audiences by hosting a radio talk show called “The KTOH Party Line,” in which he would randomly select a name from the Kaua‘i telephone book, call the number, and proceed to broadcast a conversation between himself and the person answering the phone.
After Ashman left KTOH in 1941, he served in the Navy during World War II as a radio operator and as a Merchant Marine officer.
At war’s end he joined KJBS in San Francisco, but rejoined KTOH in 1948 and remained there on Kaua‘i until 1952.
A varied career followed, with employment at KGMB Honolulu, Dole Pineapple’s Iwilei cannery in Honolulu, a pineapple plantation in Mindanao, Philippines, the Public Information and Tourism Office in Saipan, and the Pacific Area Travel Association in San Francisco.
In 2004, he wrote about the Kaua‘i he’d known in his book “Kauai: As It Was In The 1940s and ’50s.”
Among the many interesting characters he met during those years was my wife Ginger’s aunty Ann Akiyama.
He wrote: “Whenever I felt the need to save money, I’d skip a hotel meal and head for Barbeque Inn for a stomach-filling nickel bowl of saimin. The Inn also was where young people hung out to pass away idle time.
Teenager Ann Akiyama, who was a Hollywood-type beauty, waited on a few tables. She, alone, was an attraction. But she was strictly ‘hands off.’ Nobody had to tell us. Her boyfriend, whom she later married, was ‘Yasu’ Yasutake, the territory’s featherweight boxing champ.”
Mike Ashman and his wife, Doris, had three children: Lynne, Michael, and Bill.
