Joey Hamasaki, runner-up in the 1966 World Championships, was the smoothest female surfer of her generation; maybe the smoothest ever, although I won't argue with Steph Gilmore fans. Like nearly all the great Hawaiian-born surfers of her day, Hamasaki borrowed heavily from style-lord Paul Strauch—you see it in the bowed stance and proudly upright torso, the quiet arms, the precision that somehow skewed organic, rather than mechanical. Her Flow-Meter score is nuts, stratospheric, up there with Bobby Brown and David Nuuhiwa.

I don't know much else about Hamasaki. She was both incredibly shy by nature and flagrantly ignored by the surf media. This could totally be of my own invention, but there seems to be a nimbus of melancholy around Joey Hamasaki. Maybe that's because, like Cheyne Horan, she was largely defined by her second-place-ness (to Mother of Dragons Joyce Hoffman), but I'm guessing there's more there, and I'll go a step further and suggest it has to do with being a short, quiet, soft-limbed and dark-haired tomboy in a sport that, especially on the women's side, put a premium on blond and chirpy.

Twenty-five years ago I had a reader-patience-testing kink for writing 10,000-word 

 profiles. If EOS was all of a sudden magically self-sustaining, and I could twirl back to doing those freelance XXL projects, Joey Hamasaki would be at the top of my work list. She is nearly 73 now, and living in Honolulu. There's a good chance she would not be interested in talking to me; not once in her surfing heyday was Joey interviewed or profiled for the surf magazines, and while my inclination is to blame a negligent surf media, it is entirely possible that she just didn't want the attention.

Joey Hamasaki was a supremely gifted surfer and deserves to be recognized and remembered. Here's a start.

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SURFING QUESTIONNAIRE, 2001


Nathan Myers, who did much of the biographic research for the print version of Encyclopedia of Surfing, called Joey Hamasaki at her Honolulu home in 2001. She was 55. "Really sweet," Nathan wrote at the top of this questionnaire, "but has a really bad memory, and almost no concept of dates. But she remembered how old she was for certain events, so that helped." All comments in the questionnaire section below are from Myers.

 Dana Point (went for a week, stayed for ten years)


 Glossing. She started with Hobie Surfboards and learned to gloss from Raymond Patterson. Later she went to work for Weber, and stayed there for several years. Work was kind of on-and-off because there wasn't much to do in winter. In lean times, she glossed for smaller boardmakers and individual shapers and get paid under the table; she would also now and then go on unemployment. Josette Lagardere [another excellent surfer from the period] told me Joey was a really good glosser, "one of the best."

 Custodian at Kaimuki High School in Honolulu. At some point, her hips began hurting (her doctors called it "bilateral osteonecrosis," which Joey didn't seem to believe or understand) to a point where she couldn't work anymore. She went on worker's comp, but about ten years ago it ran out and she has since moved back in with her parents. She doesn't work.


She sounded depressed about this topic and said she only ever won the Malibu contest. I didn't even want to bring up Joyce Hoffman. She was 13 when she entered her first event, so probably 1959, but after that we dropped it.


2nd, Makaha International
2nd, United States Surfing Championships
2nd, San Clemente Surf Capades
5th, USSA Final Ratings


1st, Western Regional Surfing Championship at Crystal Pier
2nd, Oceanside Invitational
2nd, Malibu Invitational
3rd, Makaha International
2nd, USSA Final Ratings
2nd, SURFER Poll


1st, Malibu Invitational
2nd, Santa Cruz
3rd, USSA Final Ratings
2nd, World Championships
2nd, SURFER Poll


1st, East Coast Surfing Championships
4th, United States Surfing Championships
2nd, USSA Final Ratings
2nd, SURFER Poll

1966: "SURFING DISTAFF SIDE," BY RICHARD GRAHAM, PETERSEN'S SURFING YEARBOOK #3


"Joey Hamasaki is one of the quietest of all the girl surfers. She is internationally known as one of the world’s best and has been a strong competitor for the past three years. Joey got her start in her native Hawaiian Islands and has been surfing for six years. At present she is not attending school, but has found herself in the unique position of glassing at Hobie Surfboards in Dana Point, California."

 How do you compare today’s girl surfers in your area with the girl surfers of last year?

 From watching the first few contests of the 1966 season, I think that the girls are getting a lot better. Today’s girl surfers seem to be getting more and more aggressive.

 How do male surfers feel about female surfers?

 I don’t think male surfers like to have girl surfers out in the water with them. But what can they do? There are so many girls that surf today, and there will be more every time you turn around.


From the July 1966 issue: "On April 15, a tidal wave roared over Capistrano Beach, California. That was the evening of the SURFER Poll Banquet honoring the best surfers of the world for their performances last year . . . . Top honors for the women [went to] Joyce Hoffman who had completely dominated the competition during the year. Joyce and the other top four women surfers were on hand, and all looked very pretty with their orchid corsages. Joey Hamasaki, the attractive Hawaiian wahine, was second, with Makaha champion Nancy Nelson third. Twelve-year-old Margo Godfrey jumped into fourth place, and pretty Josette Lagardere was fifth.

2001: "HER SECOND CHANCE—JOEY HAMASAKI," BY SAM GEORGE, SURFER MAGAZINE


"She was perhaps the greatest second fiddle in the sport's history, but during her 1960s heyday, Joey Hamasaki made plenty of sweet music of her own. Born in Hawaii in 1946, surf-schooled in Waikiki's fertile crescent, Joey came to the Mainland in 1963 and never left. and if not for the presence of one Joyce Hoffman, Hamasaki probably would've become the world's most famous female surfer. She was everywhere: glossing boards at Hobie, skateboarding and riding motocross in the Laguna Hills with Joey Cabell and the gang, traveling with the Windansea Club (Mickey Munoz credits Joey with being one of the first surfers on the West Coast, male or female, to ride a shortboard following a Windansea trip to Australia in 1967). But through it all there was—Joyce Hoffman, the '60s most dominant female surfer. For every Hoffman Makaha International win, every US Championships, every SURFER Poll victory, there was Hamasaki in second place, her vital role overshadowed by the Joyce Juggernaut. Small wonder that with the arrival of Margo Godfrey in late '60s, Joey Hamasaki, still only in her early 20s, quietly stepped off stage."

[Photos: Ron Stoner, Dick Graham, LeRoy Grannis]

HIDE AND SEEK: THE JOEY HAMASAKI ARCHIVE

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