The third of six children, Richard Furtado, was born in Lahaina, Maui on July 15, 1913 to Lucy Napelakaukau Furtado and Antonio D. Furtado. His mother was Hawaiian-Chinese; his father, a Portuguese immigrant who arrived in the islands at the age of four. His paternal grandparents from the Azores worked in the sugar industry. Later, his grandfather and father were in the meat business. The Furtados at one time owned the only meat market and slaughterhouse in Lahaina; they made and marketed Portuguese sausages throughout the territory. The Furtados continued to operate the meat business until the 1932 election of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As the only known Democrat in Lahaina, Antonio Furtado was appointed postmaster. Richard Furtado attended Kamehameha III School in Lahaina and Punahou School in Honolulu. The 1931 Punahou graduate earned a bachelor's degree in business and accounting from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa in 1936. Before completing his college degree he married Juliette Simpson with whom he would have and raise four children. In the 1940s he was employed by Consolidated Amusement Company and American Sanitary Laundry. For more than thirty years, 1945-78, he was a restaurateur in Hilo. He was the proprietor of The Ponds, The Lanai, Bobbie's Steak and Lobster, and The Hibachi. During the 1946 tsunami both his rented home and business in the Keaukaha district were destroyed. In 1960, his home garage was flooded and walls damaged; his restaurant did not sustain structural damage but furnishings were lost. Richard Furtado is now retired and resides with his wife, Juliette, on the Big Island. The interview was conducted in his Hilo bayfront home.

Scope and Content Note
Lahaina-born restauranteur shares memories of his family's meat market, including sausage making and peddling. He tells of escaping the 1946 tsunami, which destroyed his rented home and restaurant in Keaukaha. He also speaks of the 1960 tsunami, which washed away a home he had built in Keaukaha. Also contributing to the interview was his wife Juliette Furtado.

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.