 The Museum of Japanese Emigration to Hawaii was first opened in Japan in the town of Nishiyashiro, Ohshima-cho, Yamaguchi Prefecture on February 8, 1999 as coinciding with the arrival date (February 8, 1885) to Hawaii of the first boat load of Japanese "government-contracted" emigrants to Hawaii. The Museum clearly displays the hardship faced by the emigrants in Hawaii, the contributions, they made with the fortune accumulated through their sweat, to the development/growth of culture and economy for their hometown, and the history of cultural exchanges between the hometown and Hawaii up to now. The former Fukumoto house was restored and converted into the Museum. Since 1995 the town of Suo-oshima-cho having sent a lot of emigrants to countries overseas began to put together a collection of various data and materials related to emigration to Hawaii in order to inform present and future generations of their ancestors' past. |
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Just when the collection began, the bereaved family of the late Mr. Choemon Fukumoto, who for a part of the Meiji and Taisho eras had lived in the U.S.A., offered his old house (which he had constructed in his hometown in 1928 upon returning to Japan). The town of Suo-oshima-Cho accepted the offer and restored the house into the Museum of Japanese emigration to Hawaii. |
 Choemon Fukumoto was born in the town of Yashiro-Mura (presently named Nishiyashiro, Suo-oshima-Cho). When he was 16 years old, he went to San Francisco, California, U.S.A. alone. While there he attended the school and worked at the same time as a live-in housekeeper. Eventually, he entered in international trading in which he found considerable success. Mr. Fukumoto returned to Japan with his family in 1924 and in 1928 constructed his home here (Nishiyashiro). The old Fukumoto house was a two-story wooden building of Iriomoya-Zukuri type with tiled roof and a floor space of 442 m2 (4,755 sq. ft). The total construction costs are said to have been about Yen 30,000 (equivalent to about Japanese Yen 300 million in today's value). For construction of the house, Mr. Fukumoto is said to have traveled to Taiwan to buy cypress and cedar lumber, which reportedly he built into rafts and sailed back. The house is very wonderful from the construction standpoints of course, in addition a very interesting housing style built by a returning emigrant, borrowing from the Japanese and Western home to create a sort of hybrid dwelling. The stone wall is stately done in a top quality finishing technique by the stone masons of the town of Suo-oshima. Many houses similar to this remain in the town of Yashiro-Mura in particular because this area dispatched many people to foreign places.  The Fukumoto family |