A century before Himawari became Garapan’s preeminent inn-restaurant, there was Saipan Kaku. In October 1914, just a month into the Japanese occupation of the islands, an enterprising man named Yamaguchi Momojiro arrived from Yamagata Prefecture. He started with a small dry goods shop, but his ambitions ran deeper than trade.
Two years later, feeling established enough, he sent for his wife. Together they tried their hand at hospitality, adding an inn to their restaurant. But Japanese travelers were still scarce, and the inn soon failed.
Undeterred, Momojiro tried other things. He sold general merchandise and found an unlikely success canning papayas—a venture profitable enough to revive his dream of keeping an inn.
By the late 1920s, the sugar boom led by Matsue Haruji and the NKK brought a wave of Japanese, Okinawan, and Korean immigrants to the Marianas. With customers no longer in short supply, Momojiro opened Yokako in 1929. Throughout the 1930s, it was the finest inn in the islands.
In 1943, as the Pacific shifted toward war, Momojiro sold his holdings and returned home to Shinjo. The timing saved his life. A year later, during the bloody invasion of Saipan, thousands of his countrymen—civilians and soldiers alike—perished in the fighting.
Mark Peattie recorded Momojiro’s story in his sweeping history of the Japanese presence in Micronesia.
comments
00