“I remember being pulled aside by my grandmother and she is telling me no matter what kind of job you do, you could be digging ditches, picking pineapple, (but) you better do the best job that you can and don’t embarrass the family,” recalled Matsumoto, chief operating officer for Pulama Lana’i that oversees the island’s daily operations for majority landowner and billionaire Larry Ellison.

“So pride in work, pride in what you do. . . . I think is an important legacy that we learn from them,” Matsumoto said in discussing what his family on Lanai had taught and left with him.

Matsumoto, the son of 442nd Infantry Battalion Sgt. Yukio Matsumoto, was the featured speaker Thursday at the Nisei Veterans Memorial Center’s Ta-Ke leadership series, which features community leaders sharing their insights.

Matsumoto assumed his role as COO in December 2012, the same year Ellison bought the island. He was general manager of The Club at Kukui’ula on Kauai when he returned to Lanai.

His resume includes serving as general manager of Mauna Lani Bay Hotel & Bungalows on Hawaii island and in other positions on the Mainland, in the Caribbean and three different Hawaiian islands.

From 1991 to 2000, Matsumoto was vice president of resorts and administration for Lanai Co., Pulama Lana’i’s predecessor, and oversaw The Lodge at Koele and Manele Bay Hotel, as well as the island’s two golf courses. The hotels and golf courses then were owned by David Murdoch and Castle & Cooke.

Matsumoto is a “sansei” or third-generation Japanese American and his family’s roots on Lanai began in the 1920s. His paternal grandparents moved from Maui to Lanai and his maternal grandparents moved from Kauai to Lanai to work for the “princely sum of 10 cents more a day on the new pineapple plantation.”

Matsumoto said he is impressed when he looks at old photos of plantation life and admired the “resilience it took to endure life there on the plantation.”

His mother, Matsuko Kaya Matsumoto, worked for Hawaiian Pineapple Co. and eventually became the first female field superintendent, according to an abstract from an oral interview conducted by Warren Nishimoto and Michiko Kodama-Nishimoto released in 2014 by the University of Hawaii Ethnic Studies Department Center for Oral History. 

Kurt Matsumoto’s father was a Hawaiian Pineapple Co. carpenter, who helped build many of the homes in Lanai City, the abstract said.

His father faced many challenges in life. He fought against the Nazi’s in Europe during World War II and against the plantation system in the 1950s.

His father volunteered and served in the legendary 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Upon returning home, he and other veterans worked in the plantation and soon found themselves in a strike for higher wages in 1951.

Lanai workers held out longer than others in the state because, besides higher wages, they fought for the right to own a home, Matsumoto said.

“If you lost your job, you also lost your residence,” he said.

A lot of the labor leaders were war veterans, and they led by example, he added. Fishing and hunting groups and soup kitchens were organized as workers continued to strike.

“They were able to rally all the workers and use their ‘go for broke’ spirit they brought back from the war and prevailed,” Matsumoto said.

“Go For Broke” was the motto of the 100/442nd, the most decorated unit for its size in World War II. The Army unit was made up mostly of nisei or second generation Japanese Americans from Hawaii and the Mainland. The motto means to risk it all in one effort to win big.

In the end, Matsumoto said the workers won the right to own property on Lanai.

Asked what he thought his grandparents would think about Lanai today, Matsumoto said, “I hope they feel that I’ve honored them and their time on Lanai.”

“I hope if they came back they would be proud of some of the things Pulama Lana’i has been accomplishing, especially when it comes to preserving the island and doing the conservation work on Lanai, so the legacy we can pass on to future generations,” he said.

* Melissa Tanji can be reached at mtanji@mauinews.com.