Interview with Wallace Tamashiro

Abstract

Wallace Tamashiro was born in 1938, in Lānaʻi City, Lānaʻi. His parents, Richard Buichi Tamashiro and Shizuko Tamashiro, were both born in Waipahu, Oʻahu, and spent some of their formative years in Okinawa, Japan. Married in 1937 on Oʻahu, they raised a family on the island of Lānaʻi. Wallace Tamashiro, the eldest of four children, attended: Lānaʻi High and Elementary School, Waipahu Elementary School, and Mid-Pacific Institute. During breaks in the school year, he helped at the family business, Richard’s Shopping Center, a general merchandise store founded by his father in Lānaʻi City in 1946. He made deliveries and unloaded freight. After graduating from the University of Hawaiʻi, he spent some time working in California. He returned to Lānaʻi at the request of his father who needed help running not only the store, but a bowling alley and theater. From 1967, Wallace Tamashiro helped run Richard’s Shopping Center until it was sold to David Murdock in 2006. He and his wife, Nancy, still reside in the same home in Lānaʻi that they purchased in 1971