Faculty
Surgery
Dr. Walton K.T. Shim, Hawaiʻi’s first pediatric surgeon passed away in November 2025 at his family’s property in rural Montana. He was 94.
Dr. Shim returned to Hawaiʻi in 1967 with an ambition to build pediatric surgery as a specialty so children could receive complex care close to home. For many years, he was the only pediatric surgeon on the islands.
Over the course of his career, Dr. Shim was a full Professor of Surgery and Pediatrics and the University of Hawaiʻi John A. Burns School of Medicine and held numerous roles at Kapiʻolani Medical Center for Women & Children, including Division Chief of Pediatric Surgery and multiple terms as Chief of Staff and Chief of Surgery. He was a founding member of the Pacific Association of Pediatric Surgeons. His dedication and innovative approach to surgery saved countless young lives across Hawaiʻi and the Pacific.
Colleagues in the emergency departments remembered him for one defining habit: he never delayed and his family saw that dedication up close.
“There's all sorts of ways you can delay seeing patients,” said Shim’s wife, Vicki. “He never did that. In other words, if somebody came into the ER or someone like Dr. Boychuk called him, he was there, right away.”
“ I remember them calling him late at night on the phone,” said Jennifer Shim, one of Dr. Shim’s four children. “ He actually had his own telephone line installed just for emergencies and I don’t think we made the connection in the moment that dad was out saving lives, but I realize it now as an adult.
Shim’s work carried emotional weight, and a few cases stayed with him for decades. Vicki recalled one young girl with a very serious infection. She was treated at the bedside as Dr. Shim mobilized staff across Kapiʻolani. She survived, and for Dr. Shim, the experience embodied the razor-thin margins of his specialty and the teamwork it demanded.
“He was fixated on that case for a long time,” Vicki remembers. “It was a very trying case, but saving her life was something that resonated with him and with me.”
Born and raised in Hawaiʻi, Dr. Shim attended Dartmouth College and Columbia University School of Medicine before completing surgical training in Chicago. He returned home determined to lay a foundation. Over the span of his long career, he trained residents, mentored future surgeons, and helped raise the standard of pediatric care statewide.
“He set a benchmark for others to follow,” Vicki said. “He had residents who worked with him, not just pediatric surgery residents, but general surgery residents. He spread his knowledge to everyone and he was not the kind of man who ran away from something. If it was challenging, he actually ran toward it. He was like a trailblazer.”
Yet medicine was only part of his story. Away from the hospital, Dr. Shim lived with the same intensity that he showed on the job.
“He was passionate about life,” Vicki said.
Shim spent decades hunting in Hawaiʻi and, later, in Montana, where he found a second life in the vast wilderness. Whether looking for elk, deer, or grouse, he hunted with purpose.
“He never hunted for trophies,” Vicki and Jennifer remembered. “I remember growing up on venison, elk sausage,” Jennifer said. “He never shot anything to just shoot it. Everything he shot was with the idea of eventually eating it, and we did.”
Jennifer also remembers Shim performing impromptu surgery on the kitchen table. A guinea pig with a broken leg, a puppy with a cyst, even a sliced finger, he handled it all with practiced calm. For his children, it was simply normal.
“Dad could fix anything,” Jennifer said.
He carried that same determination into his nineties. He continued to cook and explore the big skies of Montana long after most would have slowed. On a cruise to Oregon not long ago, he climbed 164 steps to the top of the Astoria Column just because Vicki suggested he shouldn’t.
“I just wanted to take a picture” she said. “But he didn’t want to do that, so he climbed each step and when he returned to our tour group, I thought everyone was going to be mad at him, but instead, they all cheered and clapped, and I think he did it all because I suggested he shouldn’t go.”
Dr. Shim is survived by Vicki, his four children, six grandchildren, and generations of patients whose lives were changed by his skill and steadiness.
“Dr. Shim was a pioneer in pediatric surgery whose contributions to the field left a lasting impact,” said Russell K. Woo MD, FACS, FAAP, Professor of Surgery at JABSOM and Associate Dean for Clinical Programs at Hawaiʻi Pacific Health. “His legacy of caring, skill and dedication to the children of Hawaii is a high bar for all of us who follow in his footsteps.”
Jennifer says that, as she grows older, one lesson stands out: the permission to pursue what you love without apology. “He didn’t let anyone stop him,” she said. “He always pushed. You just do what you want to do.”
For Hawaiʻi, Dr. Walton K.T. Shim leaves the imprint of a trailblazer. For his family, he leaves the memory of a man who lived with conviction, chased the things that energized him, and never stopped climbing.
