On April 15 I passed the five-year mark in writing this column. It’s hard for me to imagine I’ve written over 260 articles. I hope you’re enjoying them.
What I like most about it is that it gives me the opportunity to meet and talk to interesting people. Last year one of them was Tommy Kono. Tommy, 85, died Sunday.
In his career, Kono broke 26 world records and set six Olympic records. He won the Mr. World title in 1954 as well as the Mr. Universe crown in 1955 and 1957.
Kono’s family was interned during World War II. “We were in the camp for 3-1/2 years, and that’s where I was exposed to weight training. I was 5 foot 6 and had asthma as a kid. Weight training improved my breathing and health.”
Kono was drafted into the Army for the Korean War in 1951 as a cook, but a change of orders came telling him he was to train for the Olympic team. “So, I’ve always thought weightlifting saved my life.”
When I asked Kono whether he knew Arnold Schwarzenegger, he said, “Arnold knows me. Let me explain.”
“In 1961 the World Weightlifting Championship was held in Vienna, Austria. I competed in that and the Mr. Universe physique contest.
“Arnold was in the audience and saw me lift and also compete in the physique contest. He was a 13-year-old weightlifter and had seen me compete. I didn’t know him then.
“Nine years later Schwarzenegger came to Hawaii, in 1970. He had already won Mr. Europe and several other contests. Mits Kawashima and several of us took him under our wings here.
“One day Arnold told me that he had been in the audience that day in Vienna and had seen me onstage. That’s why I say he knows me.”
In 1982 Kono was named the greatest weightlifter of all time by the International Weightlifting Federation.
His death is a huge loss to our state.
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PBS has been running a Ken Burns special about baseball great Jackie Robinson. Many of my readers, I suspect, don’t know Robinson once lived in Hawaii and played semipro football here.
Robinson attended UCLA and was the first Bruin to letter in four different sports: baseball, football, basketball and track.
He was a running back at UCLA and averaged an impressive 11.4 yards per carry. He appeared in the college all-star football game in 1941, but the National Football League passed on him, as well as other black players.
“In those days no major football or basketball club hired black players,” Robinson said. “The only job offered me was with the Honolulu Bears, which was a racially integrated team.”
Robinson lived in an apartment in Kaimuki. A record crowd of 20,000 came to see his first game, which the Honolulu Bears lost to the Healani Maroons. Unfortunately, Robinson was the only good player on the team and was injured during the season. He left Hawaii just before Pearl Harbor was attacked.
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Former managing editor of The Honolulu Advertiser, Ed Wall, wrote to me about Buck Buchwach and Aku. I wrote about them on April 10, 2015.
“You probably know that among Buck’s varied activities he discovered Heloise out in Foster Village and led her into national fame.”
Heloise wrote a lifestyle advice column for housewives in the Advertiser starting in 1959. It became syndicated around the world. Heloise, born Ponce Kiah Marchelle Heloise Cruse Evans, died in 1977, and her daughter took over the column.
“Aku’s news accounts predated Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert by a generation,” Wall remembers. Aku was Hawaii’s top morning disc jockey. Perry & Price took over his position at KSSK when he died in 1983.
“Just one example: Lyndon Johnson’s presidential campaign featured the slogan, ‘All the way with LBJ.’
“When a senior White House official was arrested in the bus station men’s room, Aku concluded his news report, ‘Either way with LBJ.’
“I don’t know anybody else who could have gotten away with that kind of news-as-entertainment in the 1960s.
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Wim Blees says he lives in Mililani, and takes Kam Highway through the Kipapa Gulch on a daily basis. “Just before entering the gulch after Ka Uka Boulevard, there are three ruins of a building on the right side of the road.
“I know that before the H-2 was built, Kam Highway was the only way up to the North Shore.
“Do you know what these ruins were? Perhaps a gas station or restaurant? And, were there any other buildings/businesses along that stretch of highway?”
Do any of my readers know?
***
Former Hawaii Attorney General Michael Lilly has supplied me with many stories. A few concerned his uncle, Henry Walker Jr., and Adm. Nimitz.
“My uncle Henry – we called him Hanko – often took Nimitz sailing on his 11-foot boat Windy in the ocean off Laie,” when he was a teenager.
“On one particular sail they got into trouble.
Walker told him “artillery shells flew over our heads and struck in the ocean beyond the reef.” The Army’s artillery in the hills behind Laie were engaged in target practice.
“Nimitz told his aide, Lt. Cmdr. Hal Lamar, to ‘call the Army and have them stop this damn shooting. I’m going for a boat ride.’
“In no more than five minutes, the shooting stopped and they took Windy to sea.
“My uncle told me he envisioned the morning headlines: ‘ADMIRAL NIMITZ NEARLY DROWNS IN BOATING ACCIDENT WITH HENRY WALKER.’“
Bob Sigall, author of the Companies We Keep books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories each Friday of Hawaii people, places and companies. Email him at Sigall@yahoo.com
