Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.

Four Hawaii
business leaders
to be honored

Edward Fukuda, Edward Hogan,
Francis Oda and Chinn Ho will
be inducted into the state's
Junior Achievement
Hall of Fame

---

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

Four entrepreneurs who took risks and overcame odds to become successful Hawaii businessmen will be admitted to the Hawaii Business Hall of Fame at a dinner Thursday.

The recognition, by Junior Achievement of Hawaii, is part of a program aimed at honoring role models as a way of encouraging young people to seek financial success for themselves, the organizers say. This year's honorees are:

Edward T. Fukuda, owner and president of Kandi's Drive-Inn, for years a landmark eatery in Hilo.

Edward J. Hogan, chairman and chief executive of Pleasant Holidays, who has sold Hawaii travel to mainlanders for more than 45 years.

Francis S. Oda, architect and chairman of Group 70 International, one of the best-known architectural firms in Hawaii and the Pacific.

The late Chinn Ho, financier and founder of Capital Investment Inc., who started his working life as a messenger for the Honolulu office of a national stockbroker.

Ho, who died in 1987, is honored as a Legacy Laureate. Born in 1904, Ho was the grandson of a Chinese laborer. He grew up in times when directors of the major island companies were all white males, as were the membership rolls of private clubs and the management rosters of the major land-owning estates.

Ho broke through the barriers, becoming the first Asian American to hold significant business and community leadership posts. With friends, he formed Capital Investment of Hawaii Inc., which developed Makaha Valley, built the Ilikai Hotel and became a partner in the ownership of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

The formal citation for Thursday's award talks of his "entrepreneurial spirit, his extraordinary sense of timing and his management skills."

Fukuda's citation describes him as a quiet and humble man, who established a reputation in his Kandi's Drive-Inn for putting people before profits by "not raising prices when economic conditions dictated otherwise." He was known for delivering plate lunches to customers' homes and businesses and for contributing to worthy causes. Fukuda built a business that now has annual sales of more than $600,000.

Hogan, whose businesses bring hundreds of thousands of mainland tourists to Hawaii each year, was a Navy pilot in 1945 and flew for a commercial airline before starting a travel agency, Pleasant Travel, in 1959.

He and his wife Lynn pioneered budget Hawaii tours and their family enterprise, based in Westlake Village, Calif., owns hotels in the islands and runs tours to Mexico and Tahiti as well as Hawaii. It also leases aircraft to bring tourists direct to Hawaii from New York and Chicago.

Oda's citation says his designs have won his firm many national awards, recognizing such projects as the City of Kapolei and the luxury hotels on Lanai, the Manele Bay Hotel and the Lodge at Koele.

His work has been published in professional journals around the world and he is also a member of the adjunct faculty of the University of Hawaii School of Architecture.

Since the Hawaii Business Hall of Fame program started in 1990, 39 other "laureates" have been chosen, said Carolann Biederman, president of Junior Achievement of Hawaii. The program recognizes business leaders who "through their entrepreneurial and civic activities have made enduring contributions to the products, processes and people of Hawaii," Junior Achievement said. Operating in Hawaii since 1957, Junior Achievement encourages and educates young people to understand business. Volunteers from the business community work with students up to their last year in high school, helping the children develop entrepreneurial ideas and put them into action in small businesses.

Biederman said more than 17,000 students in grades K-12 took part last year. She said there is still some space for last-minute bookings for Thursday's dinner, at $75 per person. Call Junior Achievement at 486-8806 to make reservations.