I met George one year in Tavarua. For years after, we met up twice a year to spend a week in Fiji. We did e-mail and sometimes talked on the phone. One Tavarua week we shared the island with some Australians. As it went, George and one of THEM did not get along to well in the water or out. George came to me and said if they ever were to be on one of his trips again, he would go home. One day I was working on our house and turned to see George standing there. I did not even think he new where I lived. He was on his way to LAX for a plane to Nias, Sumatra, a very isolated island in the Indian Ocean with really good surf. He was going solo, no one on the trip he new. I talk to him a few weeks later about his trip; he was surfing really good surf, uncrowded, when another boat pulls up and guess who jumps in the water, that Australian. A very small world we live. In the end he said he was a nice guy and it turned into a great trip.
Not long after that I got a phone call from George’s best friend Dale. George passed away sitting at is computer on a Friday night. Now I believe that George had a mission. For one time, he came to visit me outside of Fiji on a personnel level and he took that solo surf trip so all the stars could line up, make amends, and shake hands. We miss you George………bula
A small note about George, he was half Japanese. When his mother was a young girl growing up in Japan, she was eating breakfast one morning with her family, her world turned upside down, literally. America dropped the bomb, she survived. As she grew up, there was a shortage of eligible men to marry. She fell in love with an American GI, moved to California and the rest is history.
George's Tavarua, Fiji, birthday bash. The last photo I ever got to take of him.
