The Honolulu Quarterback Club is celebrating its 69th anniversary this year. It meets Mondays for lunch at Maple Garden restaurant in Moiliili and is open to the public.
I attended one of their meetings recently and sat next to the speaker, weightlifting champion Tommy Kono. In his career, Kono broke 26 world records and set six Olympic records. He won the Mr. World title in 1954 as well as the Mr. Universe crown in 1955 and 1957.
Kono won the lightweight (148 pounds) weightlifting gold medal at the Olympics in Helsinki, Finland, in 1952 and the light heavyweight (181 pounds) crown in 1956 at Melbourne, Australia. He also won a silver medal in the middleweight (165 pounds) division in Rome in 1960 and is a member of the Olympic Hall of Fame.
“I’m 84,” Kono told me. “I was born in 1930, lived through the Depression and the Second World War.”
Kono’s family was interned during the war. “We were in the camp for 3½ years, and that’s where I was exposed to weight training. I was 5 foot 6 and had asthma as a kid. Because of that, I missed a third of my school days. Weight training improved my breathing and health.”
After the war, Kono entered and took second place in a Northern California weightlifting competition. There were only two in his weight class, he joked.
Kono was drafted into the Army for the Korean War in 1951 as a cook, but a change of orders came telling him he was to train for the Olympic team. “So, I’ve always thought weightlifting saved my life.”
“I’ve been exposed to a lot of hard knocks. I look at it as a challenge. If you look at it that way, you can always improve.
“There’s a mental side of weightlifting. Most participants spend 50 to 60 percent of their time lifting heavy weights.”
Kono thinks that’s wrong. “If you’re into Olympic weightlifting, I say 50 percent is mental, 30 percent is technique and the remaining 20 percent is lifting and training.
“It’s not how much you train, but the quality of the training that’s important.”
When I asked Kono whether he knew Arnold Schwarzenegger, he said, “Arnold knows me. Let me explain.”
“In 1961 the World Weightlifting Championship was held in Vienna, Austria. I competed in that and the Mr. Universe physique contest, which I reluctantly entered.”
Kono said he did not intend to compete in the Mr. Universe contest because he had won it twice previously. “But the 1961 Mr. America missed his flight in New York, and our coach desperately wanted an American representative in the contest.
“I did some last-minute ‘pumping up’ and brushed up on my posing and entered. And I won!”
“Arnold was in the audience and saw me lift and also compete in the physique contest. He was a 13-year-old weightlifter and had seen me compete. I didn’t know him then.
“Weightlifting originated in Europe, so most everyone there was into it. Arnold was no different. He was on a weightlifting team but eventually branched off into bodybuilding. The rest is history.
“Nine years later Schwarzenegger came to Hawaii. It was 1970. He had already won Mr. Europe and several other contests. Mits Kawashima and several of us took him under our wings here. Mits, in particular, was very close to him.
“One day Arnold told me that he had been in the audience that day in Vienna and had seen me on stage. That’s why I say he knows me.”
In 1982 Kono was named the greatest weightlifter of all time by the International Weightlifting Federation.
Kono still trains at the Nuuanu YMCA three times a week. “My feeling is that we are all good at something. It just so happened I found the one thing I excel in at an early age.”
Bob Sigall, author of the “Companies We Keep” books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories each Friday of Hawaii people, places and companies. Email him at Sigall@Yahoo.com.
