Hayato Okino was born August 18, 1912, in the Waiakea Town section of Hilo. He was the fourth of five children of Shimakichi Okino and Tsune Hamasaki Okino, who both immigrated to Hawai'i from Japan in 1901. Okino attended Wa.iakea Kai, Hilo Junior High, and Hilo High schools, graduating in 1932. His first job after graduation was an auto parts salesman for Ruddle Sales and Service in Hilo. Twenty-three years later, in 1955, he started his own auto parts business, Automotive Supply Center. The building was complete destroyed in the 1960 tsunami. Okino eventually relocated his business to the Hilo industrial area. An eyewitness to the 1923, 1946, and 1960 tsunamis, Okino is retired and currently lives in Hilo. His wife, Ritsuko Kadota Okino, whom he married in 1940, died in 1992. Okino raised three sons and has three grandchildren. The interview was conducted in Okino's Hilo home.

Scope and Content Note
A Waiakea-born man talks about the housing, fishing-related occupations, fish markets, and the layout and history of neighboring Shinmachi. Eleven years old in 1923, he describes the receding waters of the tidal wave. He also remembers the 1960 tidal wave, which destroyed his Hilo auto parts shop.

Program Note:  
This interview is part of the Center for Oral History's project Tsunamis Remembered: Oral Histories of Survivors and Observers in Hawai‘i. Interviews from this project are available in the Center's ScholarSpace open access repository.

The Center for Oral History (COH), in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, collects, documents, preserves and highlights the recollections of Native Hawaiians and the multi-ethnic people of Hawaiʻi. It produces oral histories and interpretive historical materials about lifeways, key historic events, social movements and Hawaiʻi’s role in the globalizing world, for the widest possible use.