Obama: Granny wasn't such a white racist after all

but she was a female pioneer of the Hawaiian banking industry.

Sam Slom was a Bank of Hawaii economist at the time and was married to a Korean-Chinese woman. Slom remembers looking at housing ads that openly expressed racial preferences.

The landlords' ads read, "'No haoles,' or 'AJAs (Americans of Japanese ancestry) Only,' or 'No Japanese,'" Slom said. "That's the way it was," said Slom, who is now a Republican state senator representing Kahala and Hawai'i Kai. "Did people talk about race? We had local jokes ... like that 'pake' (Chinese) guy or the 'yobo' (Korean) who did this or that. I certainly got my share of haole jokes. But I never heard Madelyn say anything disparaging about people of African ancestry or Asian ancestry or anybody's ancestry."

... several current and former Bank of Hawaii executives — some of whom were mentored by Dunham and knew her after she retired — said they were stunned by Obama's comments about his grandmother.

"I was real surprised that he indicated that," said Dennis Ching, who was a 23-year-old management trainee under Dunham beginning in 1966. "I never heard her say anything like that. I never heard her say anything negative about anything. And she never swore."

Bank of Hawaii — or Bankoh as it's known locally — was the No. 1 bank in the Islands in the late 1960s and early 1970s in terms of assets.

So Dunham's rapid ascension as one of the two highest female executives in 1970 was especially notable.

Source - The Honolulu Advertiser