Scott Hulet's profile on Donald Takayama ran in the Summer 1993 issue of Longboard magazine. The version below has been shortened and slightly edited.

Donald Takayama, aka “Fuzzy,” “Bird’s-nest,” and, naturally, “DT,” led what was probably the most idyllic childhood a surfer could possibly envision. Surrounded by the High Council of Hawaiian Watermen, the beachboys, Donald was schooled in the arts of surfing and boardbuilding. He rode his first wave when he was five, and by the time his ninth birthday rolled around, he was already becoming an accomplished shaper. Donald’s education came not at the hands of school-marms, but in the rough-and-tumble alleys and byways of Honolulu. Dale Velzy recalls a rogue’s gallery of young surfers: “There was a whole gang of these Orientals—Harold Iggy, Sammy Lee, Donald, and they completely controlled Ala Moana. They were never in school, and the little buggers could surf like you can’t imagine. I’d pull up into the parking lot and look out there and, Jesus, they’d be all over these waves. One time I looked out and thought shit, it’s ten feet, but I’d paddle out and realize these goddamned kids were all about three-feet-tall, and the waves were actually head-high, for me.

Even at the age of nine, Donald was dead serious about his surfing—or at least as serious as you can be while growing up in Eden. His boards were too heavy to carry back and forth to the beach, so he came up with an inventive means of storage. “I’d tried to take my board home, but God, it weighed ninety pounds or something, and I weighed about forty-five. I tried to drag it across Kuhio Boulevard but I couldn’t make it, so I hauled it back to the beach and buried it. Well, the next day I was digging holes everywhere, and the old-timers who played checkers in Kapiolani Park were looking at me, shaking their heads. I looked like a sand crab. Finally, I found a hole in the seawall and stuffed my little board in there. That’s where I kept it all summer.”

Donald became a fixture on the Waikiki scene, and the beach boys adopted him. Whenever Donald reminisces about growing up in Hawaii, a broad smile creases his face. “I always look back and think about how lucky I was. A few years ago I went up back there in the hills and looked down at Waikiki and I couldn’t even see the beach. Just a big ol’ wall of cement. I was there just when this was starting to happen.” Donald recalls the construction of the Ala Wai Boat Harbor, and how the dredging of the channel created a bit of silver lining—Ala Moana. “The first slips went in about 1955, and me and Conrad Cunha saw these lefts breaking all the way across. I don’t know if I was the first to surf the place, but I know that, for a long time, I surfed it with no one out. In fact, I got lonely, so I’d go to Waikiki where everyone else surfed. One of the hottest surfers was a kid I’d see out there now and then. One day, I looked over and said to myself ‘Hey, that kid’s a girl!’ and it turned out to be Joey Hamasaki, out surfing topless. She was my age, about nine or ten, but boy, could she surf.”

When Takayama was 12, Dale Velzy came up to him at Waikiki and asked if he could check out his board. Velzy ran his hands up and down the rails and sighted down the bottom, checking out the vee. Velzy asked who'd built it, and Donald said, “I did.” Velzy asked to see others that Donald had shaped. Impressed with Donald's nascent ability, Velzy offered up a proposition. Dale recalls the day: “I said, 'Donald, you need to come to California with me and build some boards. I’ll give you a place to stay and you can make a little money and surf our breaks.' Well, the little bugger was stoked. I went home, and about a month later, there he was, knocking at my door.”

As you can imagine, this was a pretty heavy jump for a preteen from the islands. Donald saved money from paper routes, then told his mom he was leaving for the mainland. She was incredulous until the end—a week later, she realized that her twelve-year-old was gone. 

[Note: Takayama's age when he first went to California has been disputed; he was likely older than 12.]

After a harrowing ten-hour flight that landed at pre-LAX Burbank Field, Takayama realized he’d landed on “a pretty big island.” He made his way to Velzy’s shop, and the rest is shaping history. Velzy recalls that his star surfer of the time, Dewey Weber, was “jealous as hell” of all the attention the young Hawaiian garnered upon his arrival, and Velzy’s immediate worry was “Shit, I’ve wounded my team!” Dewey and Donald eventually became famous friends.

 off for the Velzy-Jacobs label, and at the time, there was no heavier house. In between frequent surf trips up and down the coast, Donald’s only job was to shape balsa boards and surf with the crew at 22nd Street, Hermosa Beach. Harold Iggy, Donald’s old Ala Mo buddy, had also flown the coop to join the California clan. Harold and Donald were surfing daily with all of the West Coast hotrods that they’d heard about on the coconut wireless, including Mickey Munoz, Dewey, Phil Edwards, Johnny Fain, and Mickey Dora. Donald’s performance in the water and in the shaping bay had people hooting. Donald arguably became the world’s first professional surfer when Velzy gave him five bucks and a tee-shirt to wear on his surf-trips

After three months, Takayama flew back to the islands. He caught a cab home from the airport, where he found his mother tossing some fish into the teriyaki bowl. His mom was torn between giving him an aloha hug and slapping him silly. She chose the former. After a couple of months of reacclimating to the South Shore scene, Donald was on another plane to California. Even at twelve, he realized that the Mainland was the fiscal land of opportunity, even if it meant leaving paradise behind.

Back in California, things were changing fast. Surfboard sales were going through the roof. Velzy had licensed his name to a large manufacturer and his old-partner, Hap Jacobs, had started his own company. Likewise, Dewey Weber had gone into business for himself, and a handful of others had entered the fray. Donald had to make a choice, and decided to hang his planer in the Jacobs factory.

Jacobs Surfboards quickly became one of the premier labels in the early '60s. The Jacobs showroom was a popular hangout for surfers from around the county, and Donald’s Hawaiian-kine ease with the clientele was one of the reasons they came. Hap Jacobs remembers an instance where Takayama’s enthusiasm for wave-riding overshadowed his business skills: “One morning I came to the shop early and found the front door wide open. I went inside and the place was swarming with customers, checking out boards and such, but no Donald. He’d opened up, grabbed his board and left, and forgot to close the shop back up. I could have strangled him!”

There were more board orders than there was time to make them, but as soon as Donald got a paycheck, it seemed to disappear. This phenomenon was directly related to his new-found love—street rods. He was soon the proud owner of a ’40 Ford Coupe and a tweaked-out ’55 Nomad. At one point, he had more speeding tickets than board-order cards. Things worsened until Jacobs decided to have a chat with him. “Donald was always a very happy-go-lucky type,” says Hap. “Whenever I tried to discuss anything serious, he’d lose interest. Once I approached him and said, "Now Donald, I’m going to start a bank account for you so you stop wasting your money and Donald was staring up at me very seriously. I finally thought I was getting through to him. Then he said ‘Gee, Hap—you know, your hair’s starting to get really thin on top'.” (On a side note, Donald recently got Jacobs back into shaping. He’d been talking to Hap’s wife, and she mentioned that Hap was bored and needed something to do with his spare time. Donald gave him a planer—actually, Hap claims it was a bucket filled with about a thousand planer parts—and some templates. Almost immediately, Jacobs was back in the swing of things, and his current shapes have captured the old magic.)

In 1965, the era of surfboard models was in full swing— the Peck Penetrator, the Phil Edwards model, and so on. The best-selling boards all had names appended. Jacobs introduced the Donald Takayama model, and to this day it remains one of the most functional and aesthetically appealing longboards ever made. Foiled super-thin, it featured dual or triple stringers with colored glue, a step-deck, and a high-aspect fin. Today's collectors revere them.

Donald stayed with Jacobs for a while, then began hop-scotching through the other major factories. He was part of the design cabal at Bing Surfboards responsible for the David Nuuhiwa Noserider, the most frequently copied template in all of longboarding. Shortly thereafter, Donald joined Harold Iggy at Weber, where they worked together on the Performer model. At this time, the Weber factory was shaping and glassing 300 boards a week. This record still stands.

In 1969, the surfboard marketplace walked off a cliff as a result of the shortboard revolution, and it's accompanying collection of low-priced, fast-responding "backyard" shapers. Surf teams all fell apart. The surfing populace at large was much more interested in Orange Sunshine than in rah-rah matching team uniforms and noserides. Donald packed his gear and headed south to join John Price and Surfboards Hawaii in Encinitas. Donald eventually moved into a surf pad adjacent to Stone Steps Beach, site of the Stone Steps Surf Contest, infamous for its rule that required each contestant to drink a resin-bucketful of beer before each heat. There is rumor of a videotape that documents Donald hanging ten, while inebriated beyond human recognition, for 200 yards into the shorebreak, where he promptly fell into the wet sand—earning first place.

Donald bounced around a bit in the ’70s, shaping for several small labels—including his own Donald Takayama Surfboards. For the most part he was riding shortboards, and in 1974 he was won the Masters division (over 26) of the United States Surfing Championships. During this period in surf history, it was deemed incredibly unhip to be riding anything longer than 7’6”, particularly a noserider. But Donald ignored convention and broke out an old tank for the smaller days. He recalls getting some funny looks out at Beacons, but it’s hard to laugh at someone when they’re riding waves all the way to the beach that you can’t even catch.

Around 1979, Donald opened a shop called Hawaiian Pro Designs, in Oceanside, and slowly worked his way into the competitive North San Diego County market. His first coup was getting local up-and-coming world tour pro Joey Buran on his boards.

In 1982, while he was shaping high-performance small-wave twin-fins for the masses, Donald began to seriously work on modern longboard templates and curves. He found that he was riding his 9’0” more often than his shortboard, and he'd pulled some old friends back into surfing via the easier-paddling and generally more forgiving longboards. The beginnings of the longboard renaissance were taking shape. Longboard contests and signature models were back in, and Donald signed up Dale Dobson and David Nuuhiwa to ride his boards.

Buried deep in the Old Testament lies a familiar adage concerning pride, and its amusing knack of preceding a fall. Add cocaine to the mix, and the fall can be especially precarious. Donald’s business was thriving, he was cruising PCH in his Porsche, and the California air was filled with the sounds of The Eagles and the “Cardiff Love Tap” (a razor blade rapping gritty cadence on a mirror).

Takayama was pulled into the loop, and as epic payment always follows an epic party, he was felled by the criminal justice system. The year was 1985. The charge: possession with intent to distribute. The verdict: guilty. The sentence: down, baby, down hard. Lompoc Fed. So close to the Ranch, yet so far away. Donald discovered who his real friends were. The good-time Charlies disappeared. But his wife Sid was full of nothing but good cheer and hope, while friends and family sent a stream of postcards.

“It was a major tragedy," Donald says today, "and yet it was the best thing that could have possibly happened to me. It saved my life. The period of abusing myself ended. The most horrible part was what it did to the people I loved—I had let them down.” Donald recalls not the loneliness of the cell, but only the guilt of having hurt the ones he cared for most, people that had depended on him. "If I could say anything regarding drugs, it would be this: before you make the casual decision to use, take a minute and think about your friends. Think about how they’ll feel when they see you hurting yourself. Have some respect not just for yourself, but others."

Upon his release, after 13 months served, Takayama made a vow to sobriety. According to friends, the transformation has been a success. Joel Tudor: “When Donald was drinking and using, all kinds of derelicts would hang around the factory. They’d get him drunk, do his drugs, then talk him into building free boards for them. Losers were taking advantage of him. DT's always been super generous. The difference now is he can tell the difference between a real friend and an idiot.”

Takayama's business picked back up quickly, and as a side gig he developed and released Surfer’s Choice Teriyaki Sauce and Pineapple Marinade, which can be found on better grocery store shelves nationwide. are found on grocery shelves nationwide.

Donald laughs about all of this, wondering how he’ll manage to keep surfing. That shouldn’t be too much of a concern. For his age (50 this year), Donald remains one of the most surf-stoked cats in town. He's off at the first sign of a swell, and woe unto anyone who gets into the path of his push-button-tranny Dodge on the way to Terramar. He flies to Hawaii and Junior and crew clear the lineup at Velzylandd so he can solo a few. The Mayor of Biarritz, France, invites Donald and 30 of his closest friends to be his guests for a week-long surf party.

On the competition scene, the Hawaiian Pro Designs team is among the finest. Joel Tudor, Chris Olivas, LJ Richards, Nat Young, Rabbit Kekai, and Stuart Entwhistle, all call HPD home. Donald manages his team better than anyone in the business. Ancillary deals are cut, and the most prominent members of his crew end up with clothing and equipment sponsorships to supplement their free boards.

Maybe the best way to tap into the Takayama style is to attend one of his massive annual luaus. Held in Oceanside or up the coast at San Onofre, a cast of hundreds trek in from up and down the coast, and often several will fly in from Hawaii. The event begins at dawn when a huge Rykoff Foods truck arrives at the beach and disgorges case after case of vegetables, fruits, and meats. A pick-up truck pulls in and drops off an entire thresher shark. The boys from the shop begin a four-hour preparation of cutting vegetables, filleting shark, marinating ribs, steaming rice, and building fires. All morning, guests arrive. It looks like a Who’s Who of surfing, and everyone gets into the lineup at least once. Skip Frye and Cliff Hansen trade waves at the south end, their 11-footers connecting long-shot sections. Josh Baxter, Olivas, Tudor, and Kevin Kinnear rip the rights up the beach. Fifty or 60 heavies hang under the shack, breathing in the wafting scent of teriyaki shark and ribs. If the San0 Power Plant chose this moment to melt-down, surfing’s living history would be reduced by half.

Presiding over the whole affair is Donald, tongs in hand, shaking paws and full of greetings, shakas, and stoke. Managing the cooking teams like a symphonic conductor, he finds time to chat with former world tour runner-up Brad Gerlach, who has been riding an HPD longboard exclusively for several weeks. Donald’s lovely daughters are there, and, of course, his wife Sid. A constant stream of onlookers drives by, gawking. They’re welcomed into the party automatically.

The Takayama luau is the most emblematic manifestation of the DT ethos: treat your friends like family and never stray too far from the water’s edge. When Takayama takes five and paddles into the surf, everyone smiles. The same whip-turns, noserides, bow-legged cutbacks, and lightning-quick footwork that stood out at Ala Moana in 1957 still look fresh 36 years later.

The most telling segment of the Takayama story is that of longevity. How many surfer-shapers active in the 1950s are still at the top of their game, both in the water and in the shaping bay? Think of the changes that surfing has seen in five decades, and realize that Donald has been involved in all of them: the move from wood to foam, the signature model era, shortboards, professionalism, twin-fins, thrusters, and now, the undeniable popularity of the longboard.

Whatever the future holds, 50 bucks says Donald will be a part of it. And he’ll be smiling.

"IN TRIM: DONALD TAKAYAMA," BY SCOTT HULET (1993)

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