Obituary, Visitation & Funeral Information

Asae Nakano Obituary

Asae Nakano, 88 of Aiea, Hawaii passed away on January 3, 2025. She was born on March 17, 1936 in Captain Cook (Kona), Hawaii.

She is survived by her husband, Thomas Nakano; sons, Bruce (Marylou), Norman (Christy), Calvin (Noi), Sterling (Joanne); 7 grandchildren, Paula (Doug Hu), Brandon, Carly, Shelbi (Aaron), Jorden, Jarid (Tyler), Natanya and 5 great-grandchildren, DJ, Sophia, Breyden, Amari, Makaiah.

Memorial service will be held on Saturday, April 12, 2025 at Mililani Memorial Mauka Chapel. Visitation begins at 5:00 pm and service at 5:45 pm.

My Childhood Day’s
By Asae Nakano
     1936 was a wonderful year---why? I was born! Follow me if you will; as I walk thru my childhood memory lane or shall I say my “hana bata days”.
     Born to a large family of 8 siblings. (It was 9 but my oldest brother died in infancy.) Life was a struggle. I was raised on a coffee farm of 5 acres and my Dad did a little vegetable farming as well. Coffee was just a five month crop so that meant my parents had to really budget or charge, borrow or starve. We were fortunate we had friends whose pockets jingled all the time.
     Therefore as poor as we were we never starved. We always had food on the table. Our meals consisted of lots of rice for it filled you up. We ate three to four bowls of rice for lunch and dinner, salty food like salmon, butterfish, baka li au, ume, shi no mi, avocado with pickled cabbage, fresh fish miso soup etc. We always had tofu, cause the peddler came around few times a week. Must have been Hanato tofu (Teru’s parents). We had lots of vegetable which my dad raised. Tomatoes were eaten like fruit. If we were lucky to find eggs we had egg rice for dinner. For those of you who are not familiar with it, its egg cracked in a bowl of hot rice with a little shoyu for flavor and mixed. It was delicious. Ask me to eat it today---- No way! Raw eggs ! Salmonella! Ugh!
     Meat was a rare commodity. We had Chickens so they had the run of the coffee farm. We occasionally had chicken soup, chicken hekka or roasted chicken. Roast chicken was prepared for more festival occasions like New Years.
     My mom did all the baking, homemade bread with potato yeast, manju, anpan, saloon pilot crackers, and most unforgettable – her double crusted fresh pumkin pie. Delicious! I can still taste it today.
     Because life was such a struggle my older brother had to sacrifice his education at 9th greade to help support our family. For this I am forever grateful to him. When he was a little older he was employed in Waimea at the C.C. camp. That year when Christmas rolled by, he thought about his sisters and decided to get us something. We never had any Christmas tree, not even a coffee tree to represent a Christmas tree. For my parents, being from Japan, Christmas was not such a big celebration. They celebrated New Year as the biggest event of the year. Us children believed that Sant Claus come on Christmas eve with presents, so we hung a lauhala coffee basket outside hoping Santa would drop by. At the crack of dawn we ran out to see if Santa did come by. Yes! He did! We had presents in the coffee basket and guess who played Santa? My wonderful Big Brother!
     That was life in Mauka Captain Cook. When I was 7 years old we moved to Makai Captain Cook near the Kona Theater and Manago Hotel Area. I can say we moved to civilization, Life was a little better. We still went barefoot to school and I remember kicking my fat toe with FLESH SHOWING. OU-WEE. Sometimes getting glass in my foot too. Walking to school 3 miles to and 3 miles back. We sure had lots of exercise.

Comic Books, battery radio, grade B movies like Werewolf, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and all the chapter movies, they were our entertainment.
It was a time when we had outhouses and what did we use for toilet time? Fruit wrappers, newspapers but I don’t recall T-leaves or Taro leaves for toilet tissue. We had no water pipeline, but used a catchment Water tank instead. Durham tobacco bags were used for filters on our faucet. Peeking in the tank, I could see all the lizards, spiders etc. in the tank. Yuk! Gas & Kerosene lanterns and Hurricane lanterns were our source of light.
     As I mentioned New Year was the biggest event of the Year for us. It started off with pounding mochi by my father, mom and brother, a few days before New years. My sisters and I had to help make the mochi. I can still see my father’s happy face, when he saw us enjoying the mochi.   Oishi! He encouraged us to eat, so we did.
     New Year’s eve was very hectic – my mom spend all day and up to midnight preparing all the traditional dishes. New Year’s morning we all had to take a furo bath, wear our new clothes and we all sat together and had a sake toast and enjoyed all the delicious traditional food, that my mom worked so hard to prepare. Friends dropped by everyday for about a week to wish us a Happy New Year. New Year’s Eve friends would come and partake of the celebration. It was a wonderful time.
      Did I have a good childhood? You bet! It was wonderful! I would not trade it for today’s childhood…..
                       Asae (Yamaguchi) Nakano

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