Way Back When … Kuramoto’s Was First Opened

T. T. Kuramoto Store in Kekaha has a lot to celebrate this Thursday as the newly enlarged and modernized shopping center is complete.

Cookies and soda will be given customers on Thursday and a whopping big sale will start the same day and end Saturday in celebration of the occasion.

New fixtures, new shelving, an expanded frozen food section, enlarged grocery and market departments are all part of T. T. Kuramoto store’s improvement program.

Management’s enlargement program was completed on schedule, and as planned, renovations were completed before the end of the year.

The floor was lowered and replaced by a concrete deck. The old wooden floor is said to be older than the Kekaha Sugar Mill. The store sits across the street from the mill.

Part of the warehouse space and part of the loading area was taken to make more store space. It measures 10,000 square feet in area. Management hopes customers haven’t been inconvenienced too much by the construction.

T. T. Kuramoto Store in Kekaha is a good example of a neighborhood family store. Motomu (Larry) Togioka is manager. His cousin, by the way, Kazuo (Cowboy) Takanishi, manages the Kekaha Store down the street His father and Larry’s father both married Kuramoto girls. T.T. Kuramoto Store has a real family team, his sister, sister-in-law, two brothers, and a brother-in-law work in the store too. Interestingly enough, some employees have worked for the firm for as long as thirty years. Nobody seems to know just when the store originally opened but there are records showing T. T. Kuramoto Store was incorporated in 1922. The store was started by the late Tamezo Kuramoto who was joined in business by his son-inlaw, Setsugo Togioka. Setsugo Togioka died six years ago and now his sons carry on. The store is growing with the community and management invites everyone to visit the modern facility this week end.