The Matsumoto Store Building – A Story of Friendship
Submitted by the North Shore Chamber of Commerce’s Historic Preservation Committee; working to preserve and perpetuate the legacy of historic Hale`iwa. Reprinted with permission. The North Shore Chamber of Commerce, as part of its mission of historic preservation of significant sites in Hale‘iwa, recently installed a bronze plaque commemorating the Matsumoto Store building. Similar to seventeen other plaques that can now be found throughout Hale‘iwa, the plaque language depicts the architectural and entrepreneurial history of the building. The iconic Matsumoto Store in Hale‘iwa on O‘ahu’s North Shore, has been making history since 1951. For all but a few early years as a grocery store, its popularity grew as a result of a single sweet commodity…shave ice. Seventy-two years and forty flavors later, the name Matsumoto has become synonymous with shave ice and recognized far beyond the town of Hale‘iwa. What makes the Matsumoto store one of the more unique buildings of old Hale‘iwa is that it is actually a tale of two families. It began with the arrival of Sego and Tayo Tanaka from Shikoku Island’s Ehime Prefecture in Japan at the turn of the century. The couple owned and operated a tailor shop and dry goods store in the wood frame building constructed around 1904. When the Tanakas decided to return to Japan in the early 1920s, their son Kazuaki remained. He later married and he and his wife Shizuko continued to operate the dry goods store which became the K. Tanaka Store. By late 1940, Kazuaki Tanaka had established himself as a successful Waialua businessman. He served as the head of the Waialua Japanese Society and was part of a group of prominent community leaders that invested in a modern multi-story [...]
