Forum Celebrates Life Of Late Sumo Wrestler

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KEY Project will host a public forum from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Friday on a new book about the late Percy Kipapa, a sumo wrestler from Waikane who was murdered in Kahaluu in 2005.

The program is intended as a celebration of Kipapa, but also to spark a dialogue on the still-lingering problem of ice use in the community, according to author Mark Panek and KEY executive director John Reppun, who are coordinating the event.

Panek, a UH-Hilo associate professor of English, has published an exhaustive study of the Castle High graduate’s life in Waikane and his sumo career in Japan. Titled BIG HAPPINESS, The Life and Death of a Modern Hawaiian Warrior, the nonfiction volume is published by UH Press and will be officially released Saturday, April 16, at Native Books and Music.

“I’d like to somehow bring the land-use issues and the drug-problem issues into the talk,” said Panek, an award-winning writer and author of Gaijin Yokosuna: A Biography of Chad Rowan. “But I really want to celebrate Percy ... by really defining him as a hero.” He also has invited Kevin Chang, a friend and Castle school-mate of Kipapa’s, to perform his original song Pomaika’i, which is a tribute to Kipapa during his successful years as a sumotori.

The evening affair will be held in the main pavil-lion at KEY Project, 47-200 Waihee Road. Other speakers and ideas were still being arranged at press time.

For more information, call KEY Project at 239-5777.