The Boy from Kaʻū
10th generation Native Hawaiian. Retired Navy Captain, combat veteran, 28 years active duty. Author of The Promise I Made.
My Biography
I was born in Honolulu and raised in Pāhala — a small sugar plantation town in the Kaʻū district of Hawaiʻi island. My ancestors made landfall at Ka Lae, South Point, more than a thousand years ago. I am the tenth generation of my family to walk that shoreline.
I left the island at seventeen. In 1988 I flew to San Diego for Navy boot camp...my first time on the U.S. mainland. I would not return home for 32 years.
While on active duty, I flew combat missions over Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1996 and Iraq in 1998. I logged more than a thousand hours of strategic reconnaissance against China, Russia, and North Korea — off their coasts and overland across the DMZ. I served on the bridge of the USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) during her maiden deployment to the Western Pacific and Persian Gulf in 2006. I deployed with the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6) in 2010. I took command of a Navy squadron in 2011. In 2016 I deployed to Baghdad, during the height of ISIS invasion into Iraq, as senior advisor to the Iraqi Minister of Defense. My final assignment was Commanding Officer of NIWC Pacific — the Navy’s largest research and development center on the West Coast.
I retired on September 1, 2020, started a small information technology services company, Akamai Intelligence LLC, and 501(c)3 nonprofit Native Hawaiian Organization, The Malama Ka’u Foundation...and came home to the work that was waiting.
The Record
A life is more than a list of milestones. But the milestones tell you where the story bends.
1970
Born in Honolulu
10th generation Native Hawaiian. Raised in Pāhala, in the Kaʻū district of Hawaiʻi island, by kūpuna who taught me that ʻāina is not real estate and kuleana is the measure of a person.
1988
Boot Camp, San Diego
Seventeen years old. First time on the U.S. mainland. The beginning of a Navy career that would last twenty-eight years.
1989-1995
College + Flight School
Jacksonville University (Jacksonville, FL), Navy Flight Training (Pensacola, FL), Jet Training (San Diego, CA), SERE school (Warner Springs, CA)
1996
First Combat Flights
Flew first combat mission over Bosnia. Two years later, over Iraq. Received an individual Air Medal for combat performance over Iraq.
early 2000
The Western Pacific
A thousand hours of strategic reconnaissance against China, Russia, and North Korea – across the Sea of Japan, the East and South China Seas, and overland across the DMZ.
2004
Operation Phantom Fury
Flew combat missions over Fallujah, Iraq, in support of US Marines during one of the bloodiest battles during the Iraq war.
2006
USS RONALD REAGAN (CVN 76)
Drove the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier during her maiden deployment to the Western Pacific and the Persian Gulf. Qualified as Conning Officer and Officer of the Deck (Underway).
2011
SQUADRON COMMAND
Assumed command of a Naval aviation squadron. Led squadron on five (5) Expeditionary Strike Group deployments and relief operations off the coast of Japan as a result of the Fukushima nuclear incident in 2011.
2016
Baghdad Deployment
15 months, boots-on-the-ground, combat deployment. Senior advisor to the Iraqi Minister of Defense during the height of ISIS invasion into Iraq and the liberation of Mosul city.
2020
NIWC Pacific & Retirement
Final command: the Navy’s largest R&D center on the West Coast. Retired September 1, after twenty-eight years of service. Came home to the work that was waiting.
TODAY
The Mission
Founder, Akamai Intelligence LLC. Chairman, Mālama Kaʻū Foundation. Building a dialysis clinic in Kaʻū — in memory of my father.
The Promise Is the Mission.
The SBA 8(a) program and the Native Hawaiian Organization (NHO) framework were designed as economic engines for self-determination — written into federal law as a partial answer to a much older debt.
They are now under attack by the same federal government I served for twenty-eight years.
I am writing this book, and doing this work, because I am not going to let our community continue to be dependent on US tax payer dollars. We want to be independent and not rely on government subsidies or nonprofit handouts.
Our Ask
For more than a century, the systems that sustained us were taken apart piece by piece. The kingdom was overthrown. The lands changed hands. The economy that fed Kaʻū — that fed our families for generations — was dismantled and replaced with dependence.
Then the federal government built something different. The SBA 8(a) program. The Native Hawaiian Organization framework. Tools — written into law — designed to let us rebuild what was taken. Not charity. Not a subsidy. A means to generate our own wealth, hire our own people, and solve our own problems.
We used those tools exactly as intended. And now the same government that created them is trying to take them away.
Understand what that means. First they dismantled our economy. Then they offered us the tools to rebuild it.
Now they are reaching for those tools too.
We are not asking for a handout. We never have been. We are asking for one thing: leave the tools in our hands and let us do the work. We will build the clinic. We will create the jobs. We will restore the independence that was taken from us — by our own labor, on our own land, the way our people always have.
Give us the tools to be successful, and stand back.
Imua!