Ohnick Family Papers

Hachiro Onuki was born in Japan in 1848. His family lived in the mountains near Nikko, where his father was engaged in banking. He learned some English from his childhood tutor, which he put to use interpreting for American sailors who came to Japan in 1875 to gather materials for the Centennial Exposition of 1876. In lieu of paying Onuki, the Americans offered him passage to the United States.

Onuki arrived in Boston in 1876 and after visiting the Exposition decided not to return to Japan immediately. His friends suggested seeing the country before he returned, and Onuki traveled the Eastern seaboard before boarding a train for San Francisco. On the train, he made friends with two miners who were going to Nevada in search of fortune. The miners convinced him to join them and helped him formulate an Americanized version of his name: Hatchero Ohnick. Numerous spellings of Ohnick’s name exist and the form provided by his descendants, Hachiro Ohnick, has been accepted as authoritative.

Finding Carson City, Nevada nearly deserted, Ohnick and his comrades went to Tombstone, Arizona, where a rich silver strike had been reported. Ohnick unintentionally became involved in a lawsuit against the company after gathering timber from federal land. The lawsuit was centered in Phoenix, where Ohnick became friends with the mine owners. The owners, utility company executives from the East, decided to establish services in Phoenix after noting that the city did not yet have electricity. They made Ohnick the company’s third owner in exchange for his agreement to manage the plant. This company survives today as Arizona Public Services (APS). Ohnick later founded and then sold Garden City Farms, one of the state’s first truck farms, outside of Phoenix.

Ohnick was active in the Phoenix community, serving on the Board of Education, becoming a 32nd degree Mason, and helping to establish the city’s first streetcar line. He was naturalized in 1884 and married Katherine Shannon in 1888. The couple had four children, Helen Frances (1889-1961), Benjamin Shannon (1890-1951), Thomas Hatchiro (1892-1943), and Marion Adelia Katherina (1894-1965).

In the late 1890s, the Ohnick family planned a trip to Japan after Hachiro Ohnick received word that his mother had died. After a rough passage from Los Angeles to Seattle, Katherine Ohnick and the children elected to remain in Seattle while Hachiro Ohnick went on to Japan. He was forced to remain in Japan until 1901 due to the Boxer Rebellion and settled in Seattle with his family after returning to the United States.

In Seattle, Ohnick founded the Oriental American Bank and involved himself in finance and real estate. He later worked with the Specie Bank of Seattle. He was stricken with paralysis in 1912, at which time he sold his interest in the Specie Bank to M. Furuya. Hachiro and Katherine Ohnick moved to Long Beach, California in about 1917, where Hachiro Ohnick died on November 2, 1921. Katherine Ohnick remained in Long Beach after Hachiro’s death and died in Los Angeles on April 15, 1933.

During World War I, both Ben and Tom Ohnick registered for military service. Ben Ohnick was inducted into the U.S. Army but not deployed overseas. Tom Ohnick was assigned to Battery A of the 346th Field Artillery and served on the Western Front in France from July of 1918 to January of 1919. He was honorably discharged in February of 1919 and married Madeline Katherine Hoban (1901-1993), with whom he had two children, Frances (Ohnick) Dann (1924-2018) and William Elton (1926-2016). Tom Ohnick worked in lumber exportation in Seattle before following his brother to the Philippines in 1922. He returned to the United States sometime before 1924 and settled in southern California. He died in San Diego on January 13, 1943.

Ben Ohnick earned his law degree from the University of Washington and married Ina Elizabeth Scultz (1899-1992) on June 2, 1921 in Seattle. The couple had three children, Benjamin Shannon Jr. (1921-2000), Van Millard (1923-1995), and Barbara L. (1925-). Ben and Ina Ohnick moved to the Philippines after their marriage, where Ben Ohnick first practiced law and later worked as an executive vice president for Marsman & Company Inc., a gold mining firm. He was purported to be one of the richest men in the country until Japan conquered the Philippines in December of 1941. Ben and Ina Ohnick were incarcerated in the Santo Tomas camp on Luzon, where they remained until 1945. Ben Ohnick attempted to rebuild his career in the Philippines until 1950, when he returned to Seattle. He died in Seattle on March 12, 1951.

Marion Ohnick became an opera singer and worked under the stage name Haru Onuki. A lyric soprano, her most significant role was as Cho-Cho-San in Madame Butterfly. She began singing professionally in 1916 and sang in the United States, Britain, and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. Most of her performances were solo appearances featuring a selection of songs from various operas rather than roles in single operas. She dated Robert Ripley in the 1920s and the pair became engaged in 1931. The marriage never took place and Ohnick sued Ripley for breach of promise, seeking $500,000 in damages. The case made national news, and Ripley left the country in 1932 in order to avoid notoriety and potential monetary damages.

Ohnick stopped signing professionally in the late 1930s or early 1940s and settled in New York City, where she worked in real estate and in office jobs. Helen Ohnick often traveled abroad with her sister in the 1920s and 1930s and eventually settled in California, where she became a real estate broker. Helen Ohnick died in 1961 followed by Marion Ohnick in 1965. Both are buried in Long Beach with their parents.