Mitsugi Nishihara (1906-2004), the son of Hichiro and Fusa Nishihara, was born in Lihu‘e at Halehaka Camp, not far downhill from the Japanese cemetery on Halehaka Road, and attended Koloa School until the eighth grade, after which, at age 15, he began to work at Koloa Plantation.
He held a variety of jobs at Koloa Plantation: kalai (hoeing), hanawai (irrigation), cane cutter and mule man.
As a mule man, his job was to drive mules pulling loaded cane cars on secondary railroad tracks within a harvest cane field, from the place where men had cut sugarcane and loaded it onto the cane cars, to the main railroad track alongside the cane field, where a locomotive picked them up and hauled them to the mill.
Then in 1923, he left Koloa Plantation for better pay to work as a bottle washer, bottler and delivery man at Yozaemon Yamamoto’s Asahi Ice &Soda Works in Koloa.
When Asahi Ice &Soda Works closed in 1931, Nishihara returned to Koloa Plantation as an outside salesman at its second Koloa Store, now the location of Big Save Market.
The original Koloa Store had stood where the Koloa First Hawaiian Bank now stands, with a plantation camp behind it.
And, prior to its being torn down in 1953 to make room for the First Hawaiian Bank, the original Koloa Store building was used as a Filipino social hall.
As an outside salesman, Nishihara drove an old Ford Model-T truck and sold chicken feed, pig feed, horse feed, barley and so forth to farmers around Koloa.
Nishihara eventually became head of Koloa Store’s Japanese Department, which only marketed goods made in Japan, and later was promoted to buyer for the entire store.
When Koloa Store closed in 1959, he was hired as an appliance and furniture salesman at Lihu‘e Store, once situated on a now vanished corner of Rice Street opposite the Isenberg Memorial.
In 1965, when Lihu‘e Store closed, he worked at Ramsey Appliance until he retired
in 1971.
He and his wife, Kamee, raised six children: Albert, Howard, Ann, Edna, Gloria and Thelma.
