There are childhood moments that our adult minds return to as if they were yesterday, especially when one of those moments comes to define us.

Mack Kurihara was born in Honolulu in 1932. Dad was a plumber. Mom was a mom with two daughters and three sons.

Kurihara went through elementary school speaking Japanese at dinner and speaking English in the schoolyard with a rainbow of friends, white, black, Asian, Filipino.

But everything changed on Dec. 7, 1941.

And that’s why I’m talking to Kurihara in a strip mall while people build a boxing ring.

• • •

Unlike Americans of Japanese descent on the mainland’s West Coast, most Japanese in Hawaii weren’t sent to internment camps. But they suffered.

First it was scowls and stares. Then it was name calling. Then it got tough.

Kids at school started punching Kurihara. As he walked home, the occasional adult would boot him in the rear.

The family stopped speaking Japanese in public. For Kurihara’s parents, who spoke almost no English, that meant walking and shopping in silence.

Kurihara accompanied his mother to grocery stores and stalls where they would whisper about what she wanted. Then Kurihara would handle the transaction in English.

But after the spring of 1942, news started leaking out about the Bataan Death March in the Philippines. During the march alone, some 14,000 captives died – most of them civilians.

Every day, Kurihara tells me, he’d walk home from school and the same three Filipino kids would beat him up.

Every day?

Kurihara, who has a striking resemblance to the Mr. Miyagi character in the “Karate Kid” movies and often goes by that nickname, looks down and quietly says, “Every day.”

While we chat in this budding gym in Fountain Valley – still under construction – a dad walks in with his two elementary school-age sons.

He offers a familiar nod to Kurihara as he helps the boys put on sky-blue boxing gloves.

• • •

Some might say Kurihara has the blood of a warrior.

In seventh grade, he asked his father – a black belt in judo – to teach him some moves. A wise dad, he delegated martial arts instruction to a friend. But after several months, Kurihara grew tired of being slammed on a mat.

He tried karate. But he didn’t like punching air. Still getting beat up after school, he wanted to connect with his opponent.

He tried Aikido, a Japanese martial art in which one leverages the strength of the attacker. But it wasn’t for Kurihara.

Then one day he walked by a boxing studio. He loved what he saw. Guys punching human flesh.

Simple, pure, one winner. And one loser.

He walked in and announced to the owner, “I want to learn to box.”

The owner looked down at Kurihara and replied, “Oh you do, do you?”

He laced up gloves for Kurihara, stepped into the ring and smacked the kid.

The owner was stunned when Kurihara returned the next day for more, and the next day and the next, every time announcing, “I want to learn to box.” And every time getting knocked to the canvas.

After a week, the owner realized he had no choice but to teach the kid with the eye of the tiger to learn to box.

In high school, Kurihara tracked down each of the three kids who had beat him up, asking, “Remember me?”

One-by-one, Kurihara taught them what he’d learned.

Kurihara, who weighs a little over 110 pounds, tells his story without apology, without regret – and without boasting.

Behind us, another father holds a huge black sack dangling from a chain. In boxing, it’s called a heavy bag.

His son, about the same age as Kurihara during World War II, unleashes a series of punches.

• • •

By the time World War II ended and the Korean War started, much of the rancor in Hawaii over people of Japanese decent had diminished. Kurihara was eager to prove his mettle and his allegiance to country.

After graduating from high school, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force.

He hoped to serve in Korea. But when officers discovered Kurihara’s prowess as a boxer they made him a clerk-typist and put him on the Air Force boxing team.

Kurihara fought as a 112-pound flyweight – and helped train other boxers.

After serving four years, Kurihara was discharged in 1955. Ready for bigger things than the islands could offer, he set off for the mainland.

His plan was become an engineer to ensure an income while he honed his skills as a boxing manager, trainer and cut man.

After barely affording two years at Los Angeles City College, Kurihara set off for the boxing capital of the world – Brooklyn’s Gleason’s Gym.

For two years, he studied under the legendary manager-trainer “Cus” D’Amato (Floyd Patterson, Mike Tyson) and hung out at Gleason’s – seven days a week, morning till night.

For some, that may sound like an exaggeration. But I trained to box last year with one of Kurihara’s protégés, Bobby Chavez. Every time I was there, the guy who some called “Mr. Miyagi” was there, client or no client.

I learned that Kurihara’s a thoughtful, gentle to soul to chat with. But I also learned he’s a relentless trainer – which isn’t a bad thing in a sport that offers two choices:

Punch or get punched.

• • •

Except for a very few, you don’t get rich boxing – unless you count intangible rewards.

Kurihara married, had two sons and a daughter, worked for TRW as an engineer procurer, opened and closed his own restaurant in Costa Mesa, and all the while managed and trained boxers.

Some became world champions: Paul Banke, super bantamweight; Yasuei Yakushigi, super bantamweight; Hideki Todaka, super flyweight, bantamweight; Masanori Sugita, super bantamweight; Huntington Beach’s recently killed (by a drunken driver in Mexico) Julio Gonzalez, light heavyweight.

Others were kids who Kurihara trained for free: “The goal wasn’t boxing,” Kurihara tells me. “The goal was to give them discipline to go to college.”

Kurihara has twice been named “most valuable trainer” in Japan and been inducted into California’s Boxing Hall of Fame. But he’s most proud of his Joe Louis Humanitarian Award.

Walking around the gym, I meet Kurihara’s partners. Kurihara proudly points out their heritage: Mexico, Tonga, Vietnam … .

But we don’t talk boxing. We talk about transforming a storefront into a place named “Miyagi’s Boxing Gym.”

We talk about perseverance and a dream come true.

David Whiting’s column appears four days a week; dwhiting@ocregister.com.