Remembering former Hawaii football, basketball standout Dr. Richard Mamiya

Decades before Tim Chang, John Hao and Chevan Cordeiro ever took aim at an end zone for the University of Hawaii, there was another quarterback from Saint Louis School who starred for the Rainbows.

Athletics was but one remarkable facet of the widely successful life of Dr. Richard Mamiya, who died last month at age 94.

Mamiya is internationally known as a pioneering heart surgeon and humanitarian. Locally, he was honored as a philanthropist as well as one of the early movers for what became UH’s John A. Burns School of Medicine. He was the school’s first professor of surgery and department chairman.

A slightly less well known chapter of his life involved Mamiya’s athletic career at UH, where he was inducted in the first class of the school’s Circle of Honor in 1982.

Athletics, and the scholarships it opened the doors to, made school affordable for him at Saint Louis, where he was a three-sport performer, and UH. “Athletics played a big part in my development,” Mamiya said years later.

Mamiya played guard on the Rainbows’ basketball team and, in his football career (1946-49), was a record-setting quarterback. In 1948 he set a school mark of 302 passing yards in a 55-0 victory over Redlands, a memorable feat since UH primarily ran a T-formation with three backs. He completed 17 of 31 passes.

A 70-yard touchdown pass was called back by penalty, but undaunted Mamiya launched a 75-yard touchdown pass on the next play.

The 302-yard game remained in the UH record book until 1984 when Raphel Cherry passed for 332 yards against Wyoming.

Under heavy pressure in another game, Mamiya flipped a behind-the-back pass to a running back who took it for a first down.

“He was a natural quarterback and he was smart,” teammate Jimmy Asato recalled in a 2006 interview. “He was one of those guys everybody looked up to.”

As a member of the basketball team, Mamiya played in Madison Square Garden when UH appeared against St. John’s in a 80-37 loss in 1947.