Masako Sugawa, eldest of three children, was born in 1911, in Halehaka, Kaua'i. Her father, Yoichiro Hanzawa, immigrant from Miyagi-ken, Japan, was a rice farmer in Halehaka; her mother, Kesa, also from Miyagi-ken, died at age thirty-three in 1919. Masako helped her father care for her sister and brother. At age fourteen, Masako and the family moved to Puhi where her father found employment as a carpenter for Grove Farm. At age eighteen, Masako married Tokuichi Sugawa and moved to Lawa'i. When her son began attending school, ca. 1934, the family moved to Koloa. Both Masako and her husband were employed as operators by the local telephone company. He retired in 1960; she retired six years later. Often called, The Rose Lady of Koloa, Masako can be found gardening or reading at home. She has a son on Kaua'i, a daughter on O'ahu .

Scope and Content Note
Raised by her widower father, a Japanese woman recalls rice paddies in Niumalu, childhood play and work, marriage, Koloa town, World War II and the influx of soldiers, telephone exchange work, Hurricanes Dot and Iwa, and her rose garden.

Program Note:  
This interview is part of the Center for Oral History's project Koloa: An Oral History of a Kauai Community. 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.