Local authors show all sides of Hawaii in new books

Joe Onosai is a pastor who went to University High and starred in football for Pac-Five and the University of Hawaii. Later, among many other occupations, he performed incredible feats in the televised World’s Strongest Man competition.

Michael Tsai is a reporter and columnist at this newspaper. He played soccer at Kalani High and later became a long-distance runner, completing 17 races including eight Honolulu Marathons.

What they do have in common is both are UH journalism graduates, and both are first-time authors of recently published books about sports.

“The Power of Destiny,” which is Onosai’s autobiography, and “The People’s Race Inc.,” by Tsai, are as contrasting as their authors, addressing very different athletic endeavors in very different ways.

As a 6-foot-3 fullback nearing 300 pounds in high school, and then at UH as an all-conference pulling guard, Onosai didn’t seem like an underdog. But that he was in many ways, since he was also from arguably Hawaii’s toughest housing development, Kuhio Park Terrace.

Onosai frames an inspirational story of self-discovery through the mentors who helped him most through childhood and young adulthood, starting with Lance Carreira who was his Police Activities League coach at KPT.

He also shares lessons learned about humility and discipline from more well-known Hawaii coaching legends Don Botehlo and Dick Tomey.

Onosai explains why Pac-Five, even after winning the Prep Bowl, rode home from Aloha Stadium in a silent bus.

“(Botelho) said that he had been on the side of defeat so often that if he was ever blessed to win a championship title, he vowed to never disrespect or embarrass his opponents,” Onosai wrote.

UH football fans will particularly enjoy Onosai’s from-the-trenches perspective on Tomey’s coaching, as well as many anecdotes about Rainbows games and teammates.

The real core of the story, though, is how a young man whose dream became reality — in Onosai’s case, playing in the NFL, and for his favorite team, the Dallas Cowboys — bounced back after his career was suddenly taken away before he even really got started.

Onosai’s book is kind of like a first-person, expanded version of Tsai’s weekly column. “Incidental Lives” is often an inspirational vignette about someone (usually not as well-known as Onosai, though) who beats the odds, and often as a byproduct makes the community a little better.

“The People’s Race Inc.” is quite different. While it is replete with rich, multi-dimensional looks at those who have made the marathon run and have run in it, the overall theme is somewhat plaintive. Tsai addresses what he views as erosion of the event’s true aloha spirit in the name of promoting tourism and corporate sponsorship.

Tsai acknowledges marathon president Jim Barahal’s success in growing the event. But he questions if the original intent has been sacrificed. Among his observations is that many entrants — especially Japanese tourists — don’t bother to train adequately, if at all.

“I’d argue that a people’s race is by definition an event of and for the community, which is consistent with the race’s origins as a vehicle to promote community health,” said Tsai, acknowledging the role of cardiologist Jack Scaff in spearheading the birth of the event during the running boom of the 1970s. “A ‘destination marathon,’ the term Barahal prefers … turns the race into something that exists for outside consumption, which is exactly the case when roughly two-thirds of the field comes from Japan.”

It’s an intriguing question that has come up before. Can a major, profit-making, tourism-promoting, sports event in Hawaii be truly local and “for the people?”

The Pro Bowl — with its extended stay here starting just a few years after the Honolulu Marathon’s debut — tried to appear to be all things to all stakeholders. That worked here for a long time, but proved to be a house of cards and now the NFL all-star game is gone to Orlando, Fla., unlikely to return.

The Pro Bowl is obviously a different animal, in many ways, than a 26.2 mile “race” that anyone can enter. And the Honolulu Marathon is still going strong, staging its 44th running this morning with tens of thousands winding their way through the streets of east Honolulu, compared to 162 in 1973. But Tsai’s look at the event’s inner workings does make one consider if bigger is necessarily better.

Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783. His blog is at Hawaiiwarriorworld.com/quick-reads.