Hideki (Iwanaga) Kiyosaki & The Iwanaga Photo Studio

Hideki (Iwanaga) Kiyosaki, remembered by locals as the proprietor of the stucco-front Iwanaga Photo Studio in Camp 3, Spreckelsville, was born Hideki Kiyosaki in the late 1800s in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan, the second son of a samurai family. As a young man, he traveled to Tokyo to pursue medical studies alongside his older brother. When he arrived, he learned the college was over-enrolled and that he would have to wait a year. Offered a temporary job by the school with assurances that he would be in the next class, he declined, instead seizing an unexpected chance to emigrate to Hawai‘i.

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With short notice and without a labor contract, he agreed to be “adopted” by the Iwanaga family who had already booked passage. Hideki took on their name and in 1908 sailed for Honolulu. Soon after arriving, he found work at a Japanese-affiliated hospital as a medical technician. Later, longing for independence, he left medicine behind to apprentice under a photographer considered the best in the islands. Photography became his life’s calling. Hideki moved to Maui, where he met and married Mitsuru (May) Iwamoto, with whom he raised six children—Cherry, Ralph, Thomas, Robert, June, and Wayne.

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He opened his first studio in Pā‘ia, where he purchased a beachfront home and an adjoining plot for a second home. Much to his children’s disappointment, he decided to rent out the house and moved his business and family to Honolulu. Business boomed, especially when the ships were docked at Pearl Harbor. However, when the Depression began to affect business in the city, he closed the Honolulu studio and moved back to Maui where he built the Iwanaga Photo Studio in Spreckelsville. 

 

For the Iwanaga children, growing up on Maui was a blessing. As second-generation Japanese Americans, they balanced cultural heritage with a strong sense of national identity. The Kiyosaki children were first and foremost Americans. They spoke some Japanese but were far more fluent in Pidgin-English than Pidgin-Japanese, especially after World War II brought the closure of Japanese language schools. May, who had immigrated to Hawaii as an infant, was bilingual, and more English was spoken in the Kiyosaki home than Japanese. 

 

The Iwanaga Photo Studio stood on Lower Makawao Road in Camp 3, Spreckelsville, near the Kitagawa Service Station and Sam Sato Store. Camp 3 was just mauka of Kahului Airport, adjacent to Hana Highway. The #2 Reservoir Ditch ran adjacent to Lower Makawao Road, and the photo studio and Iwanaga residence were built across the ditch which ran under the building.  Thousands from the Maui plantation community turned to Hideki to record life’s milestones - weddings, graduations, sporting events, exhibitions, and funerals. Many families wanted formal family portraits to send to relatives in their homelands. This was a “fancy” event and everyone dressed up in their finest clothes to pose for these pictures in the large, professional studio. He and May are fondly remembered by many as kind, generous, compassionate people who accepted barters for payment from those who could not afford the fees. Hideki and May’s hard work shaped the lives of their children, who all went on to successful careers in as educators, government officials, and entrepreneurs in Hawai‘i and beyond. After World War II, their son Robert carried on the family legacy by taking over the studio when he returned from military service in 1946.