"First Person: Donald Takayama" was recorded by Scott Hulet, and published in the December 2008 issue of Surfer's Journal. Takayama was 65 years old.

 it—on the way to the beach every day. I was riding paipo boards, standing up on them. After about three months of 1st grade, my mom asked me for a report card and I said, “What’s that?” Deep trouble. My brother and his buddies were always out surfing. They had redwood hot curls and all that, so I decided I’d make one for myself from old railroad ties, all cut-down and glued together. It was heavier than hell, and when I got it down to the beach, I had to leave it there, buried in the sand until the next day.


Back then [late '40s, early ’50s] the standout guys were Rabbit Kekai and his brother Jamma. One day at Canoes, Rabbit says, “Hey, Fuzzy, let me show you timing. Follow me.” We had these old rental boards, big old balsas. “Follow me close.” I said okay. We take off together, he grabs a turn and I’m right behind him, and he gets in this parallel stance and he’s arching back, trimming out, in the curl. And I’m following right there behind him, riding parallel and everything, just like him, and I'm thinking, This is bitchin’! All of a sudden he decides to cut back, and I ram the shit out of him, ran him right over. Rabbit goes, “Hey, small kid, how come you run me over?” I say, “Hey, you never told me you was gonna cut back.”


I was originally a regular-foot. When I saw Conrad Canha, my favorite surfer, ripping Ala Moana facing the wave, I said, “Hey, brah, why you surfing like that [goofy-foot]?” He said, “Easier for the tube.” So I changed my stance forever. I loved that wave. Still do.


I was nine years old when I met Dale Velzy. He said, “Hey, small kid, let me see that board. Who made it?” I said, “I did.” And he said, “Ah, bullshit!” Then he checked it out and he said to me, “When you come to the Mainland, do you want to shape boards for me?” I was stoked! I sold newspapers for two years, and when I was 11 I flew to California. One-way ticket, TWA, $99.99. I left home with $10 in my pocket, that's it—although ten bucks was a lot of money back then; it went a long way. I was pretty stoked.

So I get on the plane and we take off. It's a 14-hour flight. After seven or eight hours sitting there in my seat, getting claustrophobia, wondering what the hell’s going on, I walk up the aisle and beat on the captain’s door. He opens the door, “What can I do for you?” “Eh, brah, when we going to land?” “Don’t worry, son, we'll get there soon.” Three hours later I walk back up, “Eh, brah, I thought you said we were going to land.” “Don’t worry, we’re getting close.” I sit down in the aisle, next to this elderly couple, this old gal and her husband. We were flying into Burbank and the lady says, “Hey, do you want to see California?” So I crawl over them and look out the window, and see all these lights, and I looked at them and said, “Wow, big island!” They said, “Son, you haven’t seen anything yet.”



I showed up and Velzy’s goin’, “Ah, shit, he’s here!” Kimo Hollinger and Tommy Lee and all these other Honolulu guys had already come over to work for Dale, and that’s how it started for me, building boards down in San Clemente. I used to take showers out in back of the shop and cars would be going by, and there’s this naked little kid with long hair, and people would say, “Hey, look at that, woo-hoo!” I lived in the shop, up in the loft, in a cardboard box. That was my home.

First thing we realize is, the shaping racks are too high for me. Dale goes "No problem, small kid," and he cut the racks down. I starting doing balsa boards. I got paid under the table ’cause you have to be like 14 or 15 for Social Security. I didn't have a card so Dale said, “Well, I’ll give you a little money here and there." I think it was $7.50 a board, which was a lot of money!

I always admired Dale; he was a man of the world. He was my mentor as a kid, and still was until the day he passed away. Dale would always call to see how I was doing. I’m in my sixties, and he’d still call up and say, “Hey, small kid, how you doin’?” "Great, how you don'?" “Good. That’s all I wanted to know.” Click. He’d hang up the phone.

When I first got here, the California surfers, they didn't know what to think. ‘Where’d this little fucker come from?’ But they were all really cool to me. What was neat was you’d be walkin’ along the highway with your board and other surfers would stop and ask, “Hey, where you goin’?” “Down the road here, goin’ surfing,” and they’d say, “Jump in.” So you’d put your board in and go surfing with them. Not like how it is today.


I’d go to California every summer. I’d fly back and forth between Hawaii and California. I couldn’t handle the winters here. After summer was over and it started getting cold, I’d pack up and split, go back to Hawaii. I’d pretend I was going to school, but the surf was always too good. My mom still lived there, but my dad had moved to Monterey to support the family. Things were tough in Hawaii as far as jobs and stuff. He used to come down to Southern California to see me though. My mom eventually joined him up there in Monterey.

As far as other Hawaiians on the Mainland, there was George Kapu, Kimo Hollinger was here, he was going to Cal State Long Beach, and I had a bunch of friends living in Hermosa. Raymond Patterson came over, his brothers Ronald and Bobby were here. We had this little clan, which was nice. All us Hawaiians came to the Mainland for the money and the adventure.


Joey Cabell and I were out at the point at Sunset, this was probably '58, I was 15 or 16 years old. We decided to walk up the beach a little; we went through some bushes up around the end of the point and found this spot. A reef break. It was good! So we're out there riding, me and Joey, having a great time, and all of sudden we see all these guys taking pictures of us. Everybody! Bud Browne, Bruce Brown, Grant Rohloff, Greg Noll, they were all there. Joey and I are sitting in the water with all these lenses sticking out of the bushes. We get out and somebody asked us the name of the place, and I said “Velzyland,” because I worked for Velzy, and because I always wanted to go to Disneyland. From then on it was Velzyland.



Velzy was in business with Hap Jacobs, but eventually they parted ways. Dale went off and did his own thing, and I worked with Hap, and it was really good. All foam boards by that time. Harold Walker would deliver blanks to Hap right there at 422 Pacific Coast Highway. I did the majority of the shaping for Jacobs Surfboards. Lance Carson was part of that whole deal too. I'd go up to Malibu, and Lance was the man up there—Lance and Dewey and all those guys. Lance was pretty standoffish, pretty competitive there at Malibu, but later on we got along well.

Then the signature models started showing up. Everybody started in on this model thing, so I talked to Hap about a signature board and he wasn’t really into it at first. So I went to Bing, and we did the Bing Donald Takayama Model. Then I got David Nuuhiwa in there too and we really formed a team—we just dominated with the Nuuhiwa Noserider. That was a great board. I still have the templates for that board In fact, I have templates going back to the ’50s.


Later in the ’60s when boards started going short, I was riding a 4'11" a 5'1". I made those for Surfboards Hawaii. I was living in Encinitas by then, and life there was really nice, really mellow. Just before moving down there I tried to start my own business in Redondo, and that didn't work out. All the people I'd worked before shut me down. It was hard. I lost my home, my wife left. I had my two daughters, no money. Linda Benson was the person who really helped me out at that point. She brought me down here [north San Diego County]. I stayed with her parents, and worked my heart out, and brought my kids up. Just the trials and tribulations of life, I guess, that everybody goes through.


The first Hawaiian Pro Designs boards I made were back in the mid-'70s. I built the first shop up in Westlake, in the hills. I did ding repairs to help pay the rent, and worked the front desk, took orders, the whole deal. [Team rider] Joey Buran was awesome. He had so much talent, and by building him boards I could try and improve his surfing. Same thing I did with Larry Bertlemann and David Nuuhiwa and later on with Joel Tudor. The list goes on. I built Larry's first board. When Larry was just a kid he lived next door to my younger sister. I saw this old board in the trash can, so I grabbed it, shaped it, put a fin on it, and told Larry to try it out. It was great. I did the same thing with David—made his first board.


The 1980s, well—that was a time of a lot of partying. It was all about getting high and making a quick buck. You buy in bulk, and you sell grams or ounces. It was adventurous. You wanted to see what you could get away with. Yeah, it was a fun time, in a way, a challenge to see how far you could push the limits. But I got caught. I went to Lompoc Penitentiary. [Takayama was arrested in 1985, along with 65 other people, in connection with a cocaine smuggling operation; he served 13 months in federal prison.] It was actually country-club type deal, really, but I didn’t look at it that way. I couldn’t surf. But it gave me time to think about all the damage I caused, or could have caused. I really blew it by getting involved with all that stuff. I wasted so much time and energy. Those years with drugs . . . those years could have been so much more constructive.


When I got out of jail I was in a halfway house for 18 months. I was penniless. Every morning they'd let me out at 5:00 and I'd have to check back in that night at 8:00. I’d go home, change clothes, go to work in Encinitas. I did ding repair, anything. I worked my heart out, I worked every day, trying to make up for the time I lost. Eventually the customers came back.

These days I go to bed at 7:30 or 8:00 in the evening, and I wake up at 2:30 or 3:00 and start making calls. I call retailers in Europe. I call Japan; it’s still early in the afternoon there. I call Australia. I really stay focused on all the retailers and distributors. After the phone calls I go to the factory and shape some boards. Then I go surfing. I started that routine after I got out of the Big House. I realized I don't want to do anything else. I like the lifestyle of working, going to the beach and surfing. I like giving boards to people. I get really turned on when somebody comes out of the water with a big smile on their face, all stoked. This is what makes me happy, and it's what I'm going to keep doing.


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