HALE'IWA — When a Japanese visitor repaired a vandalized Hale'iwa welcome sign recently, his gift of aloha touched off a flurry of contention, comment and confusion.

Residents and tourists galore have expressed gratitude to the deaf visitor who spent three days and his own money repairing the famous sign.

But not everyone is happy. The woman who created the sign is complaining that his deed violated the visual integrity of her work. The Hale'iwa Chamber of Commerce, which owns the sign but expects to erect new signs in the months to come, is now in a quandary about what to do with the old sign at that point.

Compounding the confusion, a local art dealer is threatening to take action if the community makes any attempt to remove the sign from its present location beside the Kamehameha Highway junction east of town.

"I'm dead set against it," said George Atkins, who owns the Hale'iwa Art Gallery. Atkins insists that the sign is a symbol of the community that's seen on T-shirts, posters and the Internet and in countless snapshots.

"I will do a petition drive and whatever else I need to do. For me, it's like tearing down the Rainbow Bridge (Anahulu Stream bridge). It's just senseless."

The latest twist in Hale'iwa's ongoing saga began Dec. 6 when 43-year-old miniature surfboard shaper Tatsuro Ota of Shizuoka, Japan — deaf since birth and with little understanding of English — quietly began repairing the vandalized 8-by-5-foot, red-white-blue-and-yellow road sign. That marker, along with two identical road signs placed on the Joseph P. Leong bypass road in the mid-1990s, featured a three-dimensional wave-riding surfer descending from the last A in the word "Hale'iwa."

By late November of 2004, two of the popular signs were stolen, and the surfer had been sawed out of the center of the third.

By the time Ota started his task, the remaining sign had been marred by graffiti and plastered with bumper stickers.

When Ota finished three days later, a surfer had returned — this one waving the universal sign-language gesture for love (extended thumb, pinkie and index finger) — and the road sign had been cleaned and repainted.

North Shore Chamber of Commerce executive director Antya Miller and shave-ice magnate Stan Matsumoto were among those who rushed to shake Ota's hand.

But Carole Beller of South Lake Tahoe, Calif. — who created the three signs for $5,000 apiece to attract North Shore visitors to Hale'iwa after the bypass road began diverting drivers away from town — was less enthusiastic.

She is particularly miffed that Ota autographed the surfer he made and obliterated her signature and copyright notice when he repainted the sign. (Beller has since taken measures to have her name and notice painted in again.)

Beller contends the Hale'iwa sign is a work of art that's protected by the Visual Arts Rights Act of 1990. That act gives visual artists integrity rights that outlaw the intentional distortion, alteration or mutilation of an artist's work.

Whether that's what happened in Ota's case is open to debate. Antya Miller generally views Beller's work as a design for which the North Shore Chamber paid $15,000 for three copies.

Since the chamber owns the vandalized sign, it ought to have the right to let it be fixed — even if it's by someone who simply did it on his own, she said.

"I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that if the owner of the sign — the party that paid for it — let somebody fix it, it should be all right," said Miller.

Miller also said that when the new signs go up, the old sign might be moved to a location where visitors can still take pictures of it. Nothing has been decided, she said.

Beller said of Ota: "I'd call him a good vandal. But he's still a copyright infringer, because he's converted my work into a derivative work."

Beller believes that Hale'iwa had an obligation to protect the sign from being altered. Still, she said she would rather give people the benefit of the doubt than live a life of skepticism.

"On one hand, with his signature, maybe there was more involved than just good intentions. On the other hand, he tried to re-create the surfer in the same colors I used. And he had a picture that he was working from.

"So, I go, 'OK, there was good intentions there.' He changed the hand sign. But for the most part I choose to believe that people come from good intentions more than bad intentions."

As for Ota, he has been overwhelmed by the expressions of gratitude he has received. His whole repair effort was a Christmas gift to the people of Hawai'i for kindness shown him during two extended vacations to O'ahu this year, he said.

He indicated he had not been aware of the copyright issue at the time he did the work. But he has thought about it since. In the end he is satisfied that he completed the task because it has made so many people happy.

"I can't hear," he said. "I can't talk well. However, I can understand heart to heart."

Ota will return to Japan after Christmas. He has only one request: that people respect the Hale'iwa welcome sign and not degrade it with bumper stickers and graffiti.

It is, he believes, "the face of Hale'iwa."

Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.