James Tsuchiya
James Tsuchiya was a studious, bespectacled young man just out of high school when he came to Volcano to start his career as a cashier and bookkeeper at one of the most prominent businesses on Hawaiʻi Island, Volcano House.
Over the next 30-plus years, he got married, raised a family, built one of the first homes in Volcano Village, helped found the Japanese school there, took an increasing role as Volcano House hosted prominent scientists and visitors from around the world, and played an important part in the early growth of the town into something like it is today.“
All the people knew who Jimmy was,” says his granddaughter Katie Schell.Tsuchiya was born in the Wakayama district of southern Japan, home to many of the first generation of Japanese immigrants who came to work in the Hawaiʻi sugar cane plantations.
Tsuchiya’s career, though, would take a different direction.Three years after his mother died in Japan in 1904, James’ father, Matsugoro, made the decision to leave for the islands, sailing on the America Maru, a sleek, high-speed passenger liner that shuttled people between Japan, Hong Kong, Honolulu and San Francisco.
Tsuchiya attended the recently opened Kaʻahumano School through the fifth grade, finished grammar school at what was then known as the Mills School for Chinese boys (it had recently expanded to include Japanese and Korean students), and graduated from Mills High School at Mid-Pacific Institute in 1915.
A year later he was on his way to the Big Island.His wife to be, Estelle Dung Moi Goo, who was born on Kauaʻi and also lost her mother at an early age, and was sent to be educated by missionaries at another of the Mid-Pacific forerunners, Kawaiahao Seminary for Girls.
After graduating, she would join him on Hawaiʻi Island; they were married in Hilo on Sept. 19, 1916. Four daughters followed in quick succession.
Demosthenes Lycurgus, the principal stockholder and manager of Volcano House must have seen something in Tsuchiya, giving him increasing responsibility and offering the family a place to live on its grounds.
Over the years, James was there to watch over the visits of many famous people including President Franklin Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart, and Princess Victoria Kaʻiulani. The family also was a frequent guest for tea at the house of geologist Thomas Jaggar, founder of the first research facility on the edge of the volcano.
According to their eldest daughter, Helen, the Tsuchiya children had the run of the park, taking walks in the woods, hiking along the Byron Ledge Trail, down into Kilauea Iki or part way across the Kilauea caldera, where “we would pick ʻóhelo berries, look for other interesting plants or peer in lava caves.”
By 1926, the family owned their own car and were ready to move into a home of their own several miles down the road from the park in an area that up till then had only a few scattered homes and summer residences amid the surrounding farm lots.
A year earlier a Japanese School Association had been founded and Tsuchiya was elected its president. The group secured a lot in the new Haunani subdivision and Hilo contractor Kametaro Fujimoto was paid to build the school at a cost of $1,355. The school opened in 1925 with about 30 students, including the two oldest Tsuchiya children.
The Tsuchiyas paid $975 for a 4.25-acre plot of land in the 29 1/2 Miles area next to the current Kilauea Lodge, and hired the same contractor who built the Japanese School, to do the excavation, carpentry, painting and plumbing on the family’s new home.
Tsuchiya wired the house for electricity himself and the family moved into the home, while Estelle planted and took care of the extensive garden which included some cherry trees, descendants of ones sent to Washington D.C. by the mayor of Tokyo in 1911.
Though scattered home building had been going on in the village area for several decades, “There were still lots of farms in the area when my grandmother and grandfather moved in,” says Katie Schell.
“My mother remembers that they had 200 chickens way in the back of the lot, and they would barter and trade with the farmers. You could still pick a big bucket of vegetables for maybe 25 cents.”
Over the next 15 years the village community grew with more and more houses, subdivisions, a new highway that brought more and more people, more diversity, a little commercialization.
Changes also were in store for the Tsuchiya family.In 1940, a fire from an oil burner destroyed the Volcano House. It took a year to have a new hotel built and in that time Tsuchiya became a car salesman in Hilo.
The hotel reopened in 1941, but there was another development that year that kept Tsuchiya from returning: The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. “Helen woke up early that day and heard the news on the radio.
Grandpa ran over immediately to meet up with the local Civil Defense group,” his granddaughter Katie said. But because of his Japanese ancestry, he wasn’t allowed to join in. He was told he was “the enemy,” his daughter Helen later recalled. His guns and binoculars were confiscated. An internment facility was briefly set up at the Kilauea Military Camp, but Tsuchiya was not taken there; his reputation as a strong community member probably saved him.
“All the big names in town, all the people vouched for him,” his granddaughter said.
Still, the Volcano connection seemed shattered. Tsuchiya’s wife and the two youngest daughters moved to Honolulu.
James, along with his two oldest daughters stayed in Volcano for a while, but sold the house in 1943 for $8,000. James moved to Honolulu that year, where he worked for a tent and awning company on King Street, the same street he had lived on when he first came to Hawaiʻi as a boy.
He also had a part-time job as a night clerk at the Alexander Young Hotel, where he often ran into many of the same people he had helped serve years before at Volcano House. He died in Honolulu in 1948.
During the war years, James’ wife Estelle worked as a housekeeper for Chris Homes, an heir to the Fleischman yeast fortune, on Coconut Island in Kaneʻohe Bay.
After Jamesʻ death, Estelle moved to San Francisco, then Illinois where she worked for several families as a live-in housekeeper, often visiting her daughters in Washington, D.C., Florida and Honolulu. She died on Christmas Day 1977 in Florida.“