Kauai boxing champion Placido Dias Valenciano

Kaua‘i Junior Featherweight Boxing Champion Placido D. Valenciano (1917-2012) was born in Ilocos Norte, Philippines, and immigrated to Hawai‘i together with his mother and father Faustino and Patricia Valenciano, and his brother, Mariano, in 1928 aboard the ship “President Cleveland” and settled at Makaweli.

Not lengthy after, his father turned ailing and went again to the Philippines together with his mom within the hope that he would get higher there after which return to Kaua‘i, however he died within the Philippines and his mom didn’t return.

Successfully orphaned, Placido and his brother then went to dwell with and have been raised by their uncle Macario Verdedaro.

Sadly, Placido’s formal public schooling would finish within the sixth grade when monetary hardship compelled him to give up faculty to earn his dwelling as a area laborer hoeing weeds for Makaweli Sugar Firm at 40 cents a day.

However later, in his teenagers, a possibility beckoned when his pal Cyclon Melicio launched him to boxing at Makaweli Corridor, a sport at which he would excel as an newbie competing on Kaua‘i, Honolulu and Hawai‘i Island in his spare time after work.

Among the many different excellent Makaweli boxers of the Twenties and Thirties — thought to be the “Golden Age” of boxing on Kaua‘i – have been Jose Omakanim, Robert Riola, Benny Mactagone and Johnny Dias.

In 1937, he was chosen because the “Finest Fighter” of the Makaweli Boxing Membership, and two years later he was topped the Kaua‘i Junior Featherweight Division Champion.

Throughout World Warfare II, Placido joined the U.S. Engineering Division, which constructed army storage tunnels at Mana alongside the bottom of the pali, and he later helped assemble tunnels within the Purple Hill space of O‘ahu as a welder.

Drafted by the Military in 1944, he was assigned as a welding teacher on O‘ahu.

Following his discharge from the Military in 1946 he turned a welder at Olokele Sugar Firm, and subsequently opened a welding store in Hanapepe and taught welding at Kaua‘i Group School.

Kaua‘i boxing champion Placido D. Valenciano and his spouse, Maria Bolosan Valenciano, had seven youngsters.