Kristen Nemoto Jay remembers seeing The Hawaiʻi Herald on her grandparents' coffee table as a child.
As she started reading the Japanese community paper, she said her favorite story was about her grandfather, a Nisei soldier who served in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.
When Jay later became editor of The Hawaiʻi Herald, she had the chance to contribute and diversify the stories being told — including the paper's first LGBTQ+ Pride edition in October 2022.
However, keeping readership up proved difficult for the small newsroom and after 43 years, The Hawaiʻi Herald printed its last edition on Thursday.
"I feel like I'm personally losing a loved one," Jay said. "The loss of these papers, I feel, is just one more thing that's being diminished from our culture."
Its last edition is a farewell from the newspaper's staff, with the headline, "A Hui Hou."
The Hawaiʻi Herald was a bimonthly, community newspaper derived from a Japanese-language journal known as The Hawaiʻi Hochi, founded in 1912.
Founder Fred Kinzaburo Makino wanted to shed light on the working conditions and unfair treatment of the Japanese community during the sugarcane plantation era. After publishing an article about it in the newspaper, higher wages and improved working conditions resulted for workers.
The Hawaiʻi Hochi eventually led to the English-language Herald in 1980, serving Japanese-American communities across the islands.
And while local newspapers have been closing nationwide for years, reporter Summer Nakaishi said she was still shocked by the news.
"We had seen subscriber readership go down. But we had hoped we could build it back up. If there was more time, we could innovate, grab a new audience. We really thought we had a lot more time," Nakaishi said.
In the 1990s, the newspaper had at least 10,000 subscribers, according to Jay. By their last edition, subscribers had decreased to under 2,000.
Jay said she's still looking for a potential buyer to revive the paper but has had no luck. However, she said a nonprofit has reached out to help the newspaper continue its stories.
"We're all going to collaborate to see how we can continue those stories, at least through this nonprofit organization," Jay said. "But as far as The Hawaiʻi Herald, unfortunately, other than the name specifically, there's been no chance at revival."
Despite the newspaper no longer printing, Jay said the community's stories will live on.
"It just opened my eyes to how important it is to tell these stories and to continue them on so that our kids and our kids' kids can learn more about it and can look back and know where they came from to know how to move forward with their lives and where they can go," Jay said.
The Hawaiʻi Hochi's final edition will be out Dec. 7.
