Lawrence Takeo Kagawa

Lawrence Takeo (L.T.) Kagawa was a Japanese American businessman.

Biography Kagawa was born in Lahaina, Maui in 1903. He studied in Japan for three years. He began working for an insurance company in Honolulu in the 1930s. At the time, minorities paid higher premiums and had access to fewer types of insurance than white people. He also worked with Kazuaki Tanaka, Shigeru Horita, and Eiichi Kishida to start a department store in Honolulu in 1940. However, the department store was closed in 1942 after it was seized by the American government.

After the war, the family returned to Hawaii. Kagawa registered his company to operate in Japan, where he sold life insurance to Americans living there. He also founded Central Pacific Bank alongside Koichi Iida. Kagawa died on July 31, 1973, at Kuakini Hospital.