Kiyoshi Okubo, Hilo Times publisher

By Curtis Lum
Advertiser Staff Writer

Kiyoshi Okubo, retired editor and publisher of the Hilo Times, died Dec. 10 at Hilo Medical Center. He was 96.

Okubo was born in Niigata, Japan, on Nov. 27, 1905, and came to Hawai'i in 1924. Although he graduated from a high school in Tokyo, Okubo attended Iolani School and the University of Hawai'i.

In 1925, Okubo began his career in journalism when he was hired at the Hawai'i Shinpo, a Japanese-language daily newspaper in Honolulu. He moved to Kona in 1928 and worked as a Japanese-language instructor.

Okubo moved to Hilo in 1932, where he taught Japanese and continued his career as a reporter with the Hawai'i Hochi. He also served as a director for Hilo's first radio station.

Okubo was owner and curator of the Hawai'i Shima Japanese Immigrant Museum in Hilo. The museum held a huge collection of Japanese-language books, newspapers, phonograph records and other items that belonged to early immigrants to Hawai'i.

In 1955, Okubo became editor and publisher of the Hilo Times, a weekly Japanese-language newspaper printed on a second-hand press he got from Korea. In 1991, he retired and stopped printing the newspaper. But Okubo remained active in the community.

Okubo worked to improve U.S.-Japan relations. In 1989, he was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun by the emperor of Japan.

In 1973, he published a 667-page history of Japanese immigration to Hawai'i. The book covered 100 years of movement to the Islands and included about 70 percent of all the names, occupations and home prefectures of the nearly 35,000 Japanese immigrants who went to the Big Island.

Okubo is survived by a daughter, Karen.

Private services were held.