Ferd Lewis: Thomas Shimabuku took pride in legacy of University of Hawaii boxing team

Decades after his punches had once stopped opponents in the ring, Thomas Suyeo Shimabuku found another way to stun people who thought they knew their University of Hawaii sports.

He would tell them tales of the glory days of UH’s boxing team.

And they would invariably do a double take. UH and boxing?

Until his recent death at age 87, Shimabuku was one of the few remaining members of a national caliber program from a long ago period that brought the Rainbow Warriors their first NCAA champions in any sport in the 1950s.

“He made it a point to tell us that we didn’t just have boxing, we had really good boxing,” former UH athletic director Jim Donovan remembers of Shimabuku, who was a fellow director of the UH Letterwinners Club.

Once, when the Hawaii State Boxing Commission was in recess awaiting the arrival of several fighters from the airport, Shimabuku described how UH, following a three-day trip to get there, had become a crowd favorite in front of a crowd of 13,213 at the University of Wisconsin’s Field House.

Shimabuku did it not to toot his own horn, but as a proud point of history to be dusted off and kept alive.

Shimabuku’s place in it included a bronze medal in the NCAA Championships at 112 pounds.

Between 1949 and 1958 UH stood toe to toe with some of the best in the country under coach Herbert Minn, a businessman and member of a prominent Honolulu fight family.

In 1952 the ’Bows were a surprise of the nationals in Madison, Wis., where Roy Kuboyama of Lahaina won the 112-pound title. Two years later Seiji Naya, who grew up in Japan and attended Mid-Pacific Institute, won the first of consecutive 125-pound titles.

By the time the ’Bows returned to Honolulu, UH President Greg Sinclair was there to greet their arrival.

Boxing was an NCAA-sanctioned championship sport from 1932 through 1960 with fighters wearing head gear and competing over three two-minute rounds. But the sport was dropped by the NCAA in 1961 following the death of a Wisconsin fighter.

Minn, who would go on to be an internationally renowned judge and referee, working more than 40 world title fights, had trained several Territorial champions and was recruited to coach UH’s team. In an old Army Quonset hut on the Manoa campus and in matches at the Civic Auditorium, Minn imparted not only boxing knowledge but pushed his fighters to get an education while preaching “winning with humility and losing with dignity.”

When Kuboyama made it his goal to go to medical school, Minn encouraged him to transfer to Wisconsin, where he starred before becoming a pediatrician and a president of HMSA. Naya, a renowned economist, headed the Asia Development Bank, the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism and taught at UH. Shimabuku became an insurance executive. Cyril Okamoto won the 125-pound title after transferring to Idaho State, and became vice principal at Farrington High. Teammates went on to other posts in government and public service.

To Minn the idea that a boxer could be outstanding in the classroom and in the ring was not incongruous. “My father wanted his fighters to reach their full potential in the ring and in life,” Hubert Minn said. “He was proud of how so many went on to good careers and good lives after boxing.”