Headquarters Company, 100th Infantry Battalion
Wallace Takeshi Teruya, born on January 23, 1915, was the second son of Ushi and Kame Teruya. Wallace grew up in the plantation town of Honomū, Island of Hawaiʻi, with his older brother Albert and younger siblings Herman, Doris, Barbara and Robert.
At the encouragement of his older brother Albert, who had moved to Oʻahu the year before, Wallace made the big move from Honomū to Honolulu when he was only 14 years old. Together, they worked hard, saved their money, and in 1939 built and operated Times Grill.
On November 15, 1941, just a few weeks prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Wallace was drafted into the Army. The inductees from the island of Oʻahu were assigned to the 298th Infantry of the Hawaii National Guard. Soon after war was declared, Wallace was assigned to Company D of the 100th Infantry Battalion, and later to Headquarters Company.
Upon his return to Honolulu in August 1945, he resumed operating Times Grill. The following month he married Ethel Teruya.
By 1949, Wallace and Albert had sold Times Grill and had opened the first of seventeen Times Supermarket stores to honor their younger brother, Herman Teruya (Co. D, 100th Inf. Bn.), who had been killed in the bloody battle of Monte Cassino, Italy three months shy of his 25th birthday.
Ethel recalls that Wallace worked hard at the store, doing anything and everything that needed to be done. It was not unusual for him to operate on three hours of sleep. But all that hard work paid off because Times Supermarket became Hawaiʻi’s second largest supermarket chain in the state. In 2002, the Teruya brothers sold Times Supermarkets.
Wallace died on July 13, 2005, and was survived by his wife, Ethel, and their four children: Raymond, Wayne, Rosemarie, and Dexter.
