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Alan Nagao was the owner of High Performance Kites in Hawaii, HPK Marketing, and the founder of Team High Performance. He is also the father of YoYoFactory sponsored and 2018 1A World Champion Evan Nagao.

History[]

Alan Nagao was born in 1962 with serious birth defects, due to his mother having taken thalidomide while she was pregnant with him. At age 4, he was selected as the 1966 poster child for the Easter Seals charitable organization, with his smile having won the hearts of many celebrities, especially the President of the United States at the time, Lyndon B. Johnson. When he attended elementary school, however, he was ridiculed, having been called names and was always picked last for teams because of his physical disabilities.

Despite these hardships, he has a passion for the yo-yo, and was very skilled in yo-yo tricks. When he became older, he approached an American toy company to market their yo-yos in Japan. They held an event at the Tokyo Toy Fair, where Nagao demonstrated his yo-yo tricks to seventy-eight thousand boys ages 9-12.

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