honoluluadvertiser.com

Sponsored by:

Comment, blog & share photos

Log in | Become a member
The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Monday, August 27, 2001

Rod Ohira's People
Surfer fulfills life chasing waves, dreams

By Rod Ohira
Advertiser Staff Writer

Describing himself as a "nobody who has come full circle," Kenneth Shibuya has no regrets about his life as a surfer, restaurant owner and cook.

Kenneth Shibuya became a beachboy at age 9 or 10.

Kyle Sackowski • The Honolulu Advertiser

"If I died right now," the Kapahulu native said, "I would have a smile on my face. My only regret would be not being able to continue doing what I've been doing all my life, the way I've been doing it."

Shibuya is just an everyday person, who celebrated his 64th birthday this month. In retirement, he's healthy — though his eyesight and hearing is limited to one eye and one ear — and still advising people "not to be afraid to chase a dream." Do it and you won't have regrets, he says.

Shibuya enjoys talking story and the following are some of his favorite memories:

• The beachboy days: The second-youngest of Shoroku and Kimi Shibuya's 10 children, Shibuya grew up off Campbell Avenue on Castle Street in Kapahulu. His parents owned a restaurant, Ted's Grill, at the corner of Kapahulu Avenue and Williams Street.

Arthur Chuck Leong "Chuck-a-long" Lee, the leader of a beachboy gang that surfed and fished offshore from Waikiki's "Public Baths" in the 1940s and '50s, and his wife, Irene "Auntyrene," lived in a house behind the restaurant. When he was about 9 or 10 years old, Shibuya started hanging out with the beachboys. They taught him how to surf, dive and fish, took him on overnight camping trips to Hanauma Bay, and gave him a sense of belonging, though all of them were much older.

"My parents were so busy working at the restaurant — seven days a week, 15 hours a day — they didn't have time for me," Shibuya said. "Because of Chuck-a-long, because of the rules he set, I never got into trouble growing up."

Having learned how to swim at the Natatorium at an early age, Shibuya began surfing "Public Baths" around 1947. The bathhouse, for which the surf site is named, was between the present concession and Waikiki Aquarium, he said.

This photo from 1962 shows Kenneth Shibuya's "perfect day" at Hale'iwa, when the conditions were ideal for surfing.

Courtesy Kenneth Shibuya

Shibuya started out surfing on solid redwood planks, nine feet long, and then balsa boards, which came from old Navy life rafts that were being used at Kuhio Beach, Shibuya said. "There was no Kapahulu Groin back then and the water used to come up to (the sidewalk of) Kalakaua Avenue. The sand that's there now is fill-in.

"I used to see surfers catch a wave beyond the reef and ride it in all the way close to the (sidewalk) wall. Back then, the size of the waves didn't matter. You just caught 'em and rode 'em in. The bottom line was to have fun."

Overnight camping trips to Hanauma Bay were as memorable as the effort it took to get there from Kapahulu.

"Chuck-a-long's family had a three-quarter-ton old Army weapons truck that we piled into but it would break down a lot on the way out," said Shibuya, who recalls much of scenery beyond Kaimuki town was farm land.

• What happened to the klutz: Shibuya enjoyed sports but as a youngster, he was the kid no one ever picked when choosing up sides for a game.

"I was klutz and was always the extra man they gave to the other team," he recalled.

But at Kaimuki High School, he was the first among his childhood playmates to earn a varsity letter in athletics.

"They started a swimming team and our coach was a chemistry teacher who didn't know how to swim," Shibuya recalled. "McKinley, Punahou and Roosevelt had large swimming teams in terms of numbers. We only had 10 swimmers."

• One-shot deal: Shibuya made up his mind in high school that he would someday own a restaurant. After 16 years as an assistant cook at Princess Kaiulani Hotel, he and his brothers, Danny and Bill, opened "Brothers" restaurant at A'ala Park near the old Toyo Theater in 1977.

"It was a Japanese restaurant specializing in Hawaiian food with an Irish girl Friday," he said of the business venture, which lasted two years. Shibuya went back to cooking and worked for 20 years at the Waikiki Sheraton before retiring in 1999.

• The perfect day: Hale'iwa was Shibuya's favorite surfing beach and he talks about a "perfect day" in 1962 when "the waves were coming in four to five a set at 10-15 minute intervals. There was a slight off-shore wind and it was so clear, like a lake. On the takeoffs, there were no bumps."

• The really big one: Recalling his first experience on a big wave at Waimea Bay, Shibuya said: "For me, it was just a personal challenge; I wasn't there to prove anything. My first wave was maybe 20 feet. I stood up and when I looked down, it was like the elevator door opened and you're looking down the shaft. My first thought was, "what am I doing here."

To me, everybody has an interesting story. This is just one of them.

E-mail Rod Ohira at rohira@honoluluadvertiser.com or call 535-8181.