Simi Valley teacher a ‘Survivor’ contestant
By Michelle Knight knight@theacorn.com

Bruce Kanegai

Bruce Kanegai apparently doesn’t shy away from a challenge. He achieved Eagle Scout rank in the Boy Scouts as a teen. He earned a fifth-degree black belt in karate and, for about four decades, he’s taught art to a generation of Simi Valley High School students and karate to thousands of the area’s youth.

But the 58-year-old may have found his greatest challenge yet. Kanegai appeared on the reality TV show “Survivor: Panama—Exile Island,” which began airing Feb. 2 on CBS. He’s one of 16 contestants in the latest edition of the “Survivor” series. Whoever “outplays and outlasts” the others through 39 episodes will win $1 million.

The show’s format has changed for this series. Contestants are grouped by gender and age into four teams: younger women, younger men, older women and older men.

Kanegai is in the last group.

He’s contractually barred from speaking about his experience, but those who know him were eager to predict how he’ll do on the show.

“He’s going to do a good job— this guy is mentally tough—I’d be surprised if he didn’t,” said Jules Griggs, who was a karate student of Kanegai’s for five years in the 1980s.

Kanegai is the oldest contestant on the show, but Griggs believes his discipline and stamina will carry him to the end. As a teen, Griggs, now a Ventura County fire captain, took backpacking classes from Kanegai and has seen his resilience in action. He said that in 1980 Kanegai ran the 220-mile John Muir Trail, which covers three national parks from Mount Whitney to Yosemite and includes 14,000foot peaks.

Simi Valley City Council member Steve Sojka also met Kanegai in the ’80s when he took a drafting class as a junior at SVHS.

“What I remember is he was always one of the teachers everybody liked, very positive, very disciplined,” Sojka said. “I wouldn’t put it past him to win.”

SVUSD Principal Steve Pietrolungo said Kanegai is the talk of the campus.

“We’re really excited that we have a star on our hands,” Pietrolungo said. “Bruce is wellloved by students, teachers—it’s the buzz on campus.”

The award-winning art instructor the Rotary Club named Teacher of the Year is a third-generation Japanese American who grew up in Los Angeles. He’s taught police officers arrest and control techniques and currently is completing a book on the history of Shotokan karate in American.

Kanegai and his wife of 27 years, Nancy, live in Simi Valley. They have two children, Alexander and Danielle.