This Mother’s Day is a special one for “Mama” Emma Ouye.
Ouye, who turns 93 this year, and was honored recently at the Kaua‘i Historical Society’s annual Royal Pa‘ina celebration for her role as the owner and operator of the famed Club Jetty at Nawiliwili. Ouye was presented as part of a triumvirate of women who created and operated landmark bars on Kaua‘i, along with the late Grace Guslander of the Coco Palms Resort and Louise Marston of Tahiti Nui in Hanalei.
She was born in Hanalei on October 13, 1907, to Chee Chong Hing and Pepe Malia. Her sister was Anne Kanani Asing, the mother of Ouye’s hanai son Councilchair Kaipo Asing, and former Kaua‘i Visitors Bureau executive director Maile Semitekol. Ouye graduated from Kaua‘i High School and was helped in gaining an education through the support of G.N. Wilcox, a friend of her beekeeping father.
She married the late Manji James Ouye in 1927.
Her grandson Pono Ouye, who now splits his time between Kaua‘i and a fish processing operation in Alaska, recently brought together family and friends to a special dinner to recall Ouye’s eventful past on Kaua‘i.
“Frank Sinatra threw saimin noodles all over the table at the Club Jetty, late at night,” Pono Ouye said of one tale. “He didn’t understand what pupus were. He put two hands in the bowl and sprinkled it all over the table. He’d been drinking.”
Other celebrities who frequented the bar included Lee Marvin and John Wayne, in town in the early 1960s to star in the film “Donovan’s Reef.”
“John Wayne would swim in, and try to hide the fact that he was all dripping wet,” he said. “Grandma said she was trying to stop him from doing that. She had him come by when she fed the shark (who frequented the waters off the club). She would chant at night, to attract shark. John Wayne saw the shark, he was petrified and never swam into the club again.
Pono Ouye said the Club Jetty evolved from a restaurant his grandmother started called Hale Aina, which was located in Nawiliwili at the bottom of hill that leads up to Kaua‘i High School, and was formerly a Nawiliwilil Transportation Company building. This was Kaua‘i’s first steak house, Pono Ouye said, and served beef from Charlie Rice’s ranch at Kipu.
The restaurant moved to a Nawiliwili Yacht Club building about 1950 in part to help cater meals for “Pagan Love Song,” Kaua‘i’s first color feature Hollywood film. Later Tom King of the Territorial Harbors Division told her of a larger building along the jetty at Nawiliwili Harbor that became Club Jetty.
The spot became a leading Kaua‘i night spot, with entertainers coming from Las Vegas, Honolulu and other locales to perform, in addition to Hawaiian, jazz and rock musicians from Kaua‘i during several eras from the 1950s through the 1980s when Nawiliwili served as the center of nightlife in Lihu‘e and the rest of Kaua‘i.
The devastation of Hurricane ‘Iniki in 1992 finished off the landmark night spot and restaurant that stayed open from 4 p.m. to 4 a.m.
Mama Emma Ouye is also noted as a leading figure in the Democratic Party of Kaua‘i, and served as hostess at her home to the late Gov. John Burns, and to Gov. George Ariyoshi, during their years in office.
She is a lifetime member of the Royal Order of Kamehameha, and its Women’s Auxillary, Kaumuali‘i Chapter 3, along with a number of other community service programs.
“If you help people with their life, you will receive help with your’s,” she is quoted as saying.
Pono Ouye said his grandmother made her first trip out of Hawai‘i in the late 1990s, a visit to Las Vegas.
“I hear so many people tell me what a great lady she was,” Pono Ouye said. “It really made an impression on a lot of people that she took the time. She had a gift.”
- Chris Cook, editor, may be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 227) or ccook@pulitzer.net.
