Dr. Kazuo Teruya, MD '43
Ultimate Alumnus, Christian Educator, Philanthropist, Humanitarian,
Dedicated Church Worker, Community Servant, Volunteer Extraordinaire.

Lets go back around 1938 and imagine yourself living on the plantation in Kekaha, Kauai and your future was already determined by the mere fact you were born there.  It was natural for all to expect that once you were “pau” with high school you automatically were expected to be a “plantation worker”.

Treasure #9 was to become a second generation “plantation worker”.  His parents Kamado Teruya & Kuse Tsukiyama both of Okinawa, Japan moved to Kauai to work in the sugar fields.  “Life was slow, but life was good too”.  They enjoyed working and living with plantation families who all had the same goals in life. Their neighbors, “right next door” name Kiyabu were great friends.  One difference is that the Kiyabu’s owned a small store in town and their son George went to school in Honolulu.  When he came home for the summers Kamado and Kuse Teruya noticed a big difference in his attitude and his ways of living.  This was something that the Teruya’s wanted for their children.    

The next school year found Kazuo and his older sister in Honolulu attending Hawaiian Mission Academy.  Money was limited.  His sister 15 years of age worked as a live-in housekeeper for a family and Kazuo live in an “enclosed porch at the old Japanese church building with two families”.  He supported himself by working at the school doing yard work and in the school’s print shop.

    
Kazuo states that “his school environment at HMA was so different from public school that the idea of becoming a “plantation worker” gradually disappeared.  The influence of the faculty was such that if you were a girl, you were inspired to become nurse or a teacher.  If you were a boy you were encouraged to be a minister or a doctor.”

    
Like most Japanese boys in their late teens and early twenties, Kazuo decided to join the Army before going on to college.  It was at the tail end of the war but Kazuo joined and was sent to Italy where he was assigned to work for the army newspaper “Stars and Stripes”.

    
After the war was over, Kazuo entered La Sierra College.  He completed his bachelor’s degree and went on to medical school at the College of Medical Evangelist in Loma Linda, California and graduating in 1958.  He met Rose Leong ’47 while in medical school and were married in 1955

    
Kazuo opened his practice in the Alexander Young Building in 1960.  He served as Chairman of the Pan Pacific Surgical Association; President of the Hawaii Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Society; Chairman of the Honolulu Medical Group Clinic;  and Associate Professor of Surgery at the John Burns Medical School.  He also served at a Consultant to the Hawaii School for the Deaf and Blind.  He was the Chief and on the Medical Staff Executive Committee of Queen’s Medical Center.

    
Kazuo passion has been for Hawaiian Mission Academy Alumni Association.  He has always had an interest in giving students the opportunity to dream and prepare for higher education and professional careers.  He continues to promote the transformation of the traditional classroom to the progressive non-traditional classroom based on Christian rather than secular principals that is more effective in preparing students for  the 21^st century educational objectives. 

Kazuo is part of a handful of HMA graduates whose lives are dedicated and committed to the preservation of Christian education at HMA.  Kazuo will always have a positive influence on the Alumni Association of HMA.  He will always be remembered as a quiet “giant”, a modest individual, an educator, a philanthropist, a positive Christian, and a dedicated alumnus in preserving Christian education at Hawaiian Mission Academy.