There’s not many athletic clubs that can boast 100 years of local operation and tradition.
Last weekend, the Waiakea Pirates Athletic Club celebrated its centennial anniversary — officially completing 100 years of club sports on the isle.
The anniversary’s activities spanned three days — with a golf tournament on Friday, a banquet on Saturday and a memorial ceremony at the Waiakea Kai Tsunami Clock on Sunday.
“It’s just decades and decades of athletes and people in the community,” coach Kegan Miura said. “You wouldn’t realize that they have their roles in different places and business in Hilo, but also share that connection through sports — and are great ball players.
“It’s just a rich history that we have. It was a great weekend because we got to see so many of the old-timers and hear their stories. Like remembering facing teams from Japan that would come down to play, or different major league guys they met. Back in the day, they weren’t really getting paid a lot of money in the offseason and they’d come down to Hawai‘i on the way to Japan.”
Among the professional players who met the Pirates was Babe Ruth.
Though the Pirates’ current focus is their AJA baseball team, their club once fielded a variety of sports teams for both the young and old, including football, basketball and bowling.
“Right up until COVID, the club had a youth organization from tee ball all the way upto COLT league,” Miura said. “It was a strong baseball presence in the community. Since COVID, the youth stuff kind of stopped.”
However, the club is looking to revilatize its youth programs.
The Pirates are more than a perennial presence in local sports, their club is a living product of a bygone era. When the Pirates opened up shop, Hawaii was several decades away from statehood and Waiakea was seen as more of a separate township from Hilo.
The Pirates have spent 40 years maintaining the tsunami clock next to the Naniloa Golf Course, which they re-erected in 1984 in remembrance of the devastation wrought by the tsunamis of 1960 and 1946.
“That used to be the whole Waiakea town, where the organization started from,” Miura said. “After the tsunami wiped it out, (the clock) is one piece of history that’s still left and that the club still takes car of until this day. Every month, we go and clean up the area, put flowers and have a memorial there.”
“The history of the club is tied to the sad and devastating effects of the 1946 and 1960 tidal waves, as well as the hardships of World War II,” wrote Nakamura in the aforementioned essay. “Many Waiakea Pirates men served their country well during World War II.”
The club was founded in 1924 by two Waiakea locals, Nobou Maruyama and Tsurumatsu Nakamura. With limited financial resources, the Pirates worked their way into playing baseball in the locally-esteemed Hilo Senior League.
“The old timers were saying that back in the day, it was kinda more with the territory,” said Miura, “if you were in Waiakea town, you were part of the Waiakea Pirates. If you were further up, you were part of the (Lincoln) Wreckers. Back in the day, I guess they would have some good scraps with each other on the baseball field and out in public. That’s just some history that we never really knew about, and was interesting to hear.”
It’s not just the sports, but a sense of community that has kept the Pirates together for a whole century.
“It’s bigger than sports,” Miura said. “It’s about each other, the people, the camaraderie — taking care of your neighbor and care of each other, and that’s what made it go on for all of these years. Also, sharing the knowledge and passing it on to the next generation — just perpetuating it.”
Another aspect of the Pirates’ anniversary celebration was remembrance of former club members who passed away within the past four years.
PIRATES LOST SINCE 2020
Sadao Aoki
Kevin Aoki
Richard DeSa Jr.
Eiichi Kanda
Ann Kaya
Raymond Kaya
Lefty Kawazoe
Randolph Ishimaru
Norman Iha
John Hamano
Herbert “ Buster” Maruyama
Ruby Maruyam a
Henry Okuhara
Royden Okunami
Masae Mende
Marion Shigeta
Calvin Shindo
Oliver Sekimura
Lon Taniguchi
Margaret Yamamoto