Agronomist Hisao Kimura, 90
By Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Big Island Bureau
HILO, Hawai'i — Hisao Kimura, a longtime youth coach and Big Island community leader, died Jan. 1 at home. He was 90.
He was born Jan. 15, 1915, in Waimea, graduated from Hilo High School and went to work as a teenager at Parker Ranch, milking cows. He later became an agronomist, working for the ranch a total of 47 years.
Alex Penovaroff, a Parker Ranch cowboy for 15 years, recalled Kimura as a baseball and basketball coach who influenced youngsters by holding them to high standards and occasionally chewing them out to get the results he wanted.
"His team was kind of the elite team, because you not only had to have ability, you had to have character to play for him," Penovoroff said.
Kimura founded Waimea's first Boy Scout troop and was active in the Waimea Lions Club, Waimea Preservation Society and was a member of Imiola Congregational Church. A lifelong Republican, he had a passion for politics, Penovaroff said.
Dressed in his uniform of khaki shirt and blue jeans, Kimura would stand with hands in his pockets, speaking in a relaxed way that put listeners at ease.
"He walked with authority, with dignity, with a snap," and appeared ready for another decade, Penovaroff said.
Mel Hewett, trustee for the Parker Ranch Foundation Trust, said the patient, soft-spoken Kimura stored a vast knowledge of the ranch. He knew where each strain of grass grew best — critical to make the land productive to support livestock.
He was considered an expert in pest control, and ranch staff would call on him long after his retirement for suggestions about combating noxious weeds.
"He just had tremendous knowledge of the ranch, of the history," Hewett said. "We're sorely going to miss a guy like him."
Kimura's son, Larry, said his father wanted more for his children than the hard life of cattle ranching. "He believed that education could take anyone to a higher level. He only went to high school, and he expected us to go higher than high school, and we all did."
Kimura's connection to the land and area surrounding Mauna Kea influenced his children. "That contributes to knowing Hawaiian culture in a very significant way," said Larry Kimura, who went on to become assistant professor of Hawaiian studies at the College of Hawaiian Language at the University of Hawaii at Hilo and a co-founder of 'Aha Punana Leo, the groundbreaking Hawaiian-language immersion preschool program.
In recent years, Parker Ranch relied on its retired agronomist to help preserve ranch history, inviting Kimura to study old photographs and explain their significance.
In addition to his son, Larry, he is survived by his wife, Elizabeth, sons Lester and James, daughters Naomi Hidalgo, Leonetta Mills and Leila Staniec, 11 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.
Visitation will be 9 to 11 a.m. Saturday at Imiola Congregational Church in Waimea, with a service at 11 a.m. Burial will follow in the church cemetery.
Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 935-3916.
