I first met Shunichi Kimura in 1966, when he was chairman of the Hawaii County Board of Supervisors and I interviewed him for a student project at the University of Hawaii at Hilo.
We didn’t cross paths again for seven years, and I was amazed when he remembered not only my name, but details about my studies we’d discussed.
His savantlike memory immediately came to mind when I heard the news of his recent death in California at 87.
I got to know Kimura well when I later covered him as Big Island mayor and circuit judge, and quickly learned he could walk into a crowd and greet just about everybody he encountered by name.
His memory was more than a parlor trick that ingratiated him to voters; it enabled him to recall every detail of the complex issues he faced.
In a way, Kimura was Hawaii’s first computer-savvy politician — except the computer was in his head.
Unlike many of his contemporaries who practiced politics from the gut, Kimura was reserved in manner and focused on policy; he chose his fights as carefully as his words.
With his planning director, Raymond Suefuji, he raised standards for responsible land use and pushed renewable energy options such as geothermal even before the first Arab oil embargo showed us the fragility of petroleum dependency.
He pursued badly needed economic development without disregarding the aina.
Kimura was as close to a Boy Scout as I’ve seen in politics, running a clean and high-minded administration.
Young reporters seeking to emulate Woodward and Bernstein in the then-emerging Watergate scandal would find little fodder on Kimura’s watch.
He had a shot at higher office but took his public service in a different direction in 1974 when he became a circuit judge in Hilo.
He didn’t have much legal experience, having served as a deputy prosecutor for only a short time out of law school before diving into politics. But he was fair, diligent and had the perfect temperament to earn wide respect during his 20 years on the bench.
Kimura presided over one of the Big Island’s most notorious trials involving the murder of Benny Madamba in a dispute between rival crime bosses Henry Huihui and Alvin Kaohu.
With heavy media coverage and each of the four defendants having his own attorney, the lengthy trial could have become an O.J. Simpson-type circus but for Kimura’s steady hand with the gavel.
To avoid disrupting the lives of sequestered jurors longer than necessary, he held court into the night and on weekends; I carried my sleeping 5-year-old daughter up the courthouse stairs to hear the late-night verdict.
Always humble about his considerable accomplishments, Kimura shone as a model of what public service should look like.
Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.
