Checkoway, Julie. The Three-Year Swim Club: The Untold Story of Maui's Sugar Ditch Kids and Their Quest for Olympic Glory. New York: Grand Central. 2015. Print.
First Sentences:
Description:
Fred
On Friday, August 20, 1937, three thousand people brimmed the bleachers at the Waikiki War Memorial Natatorium -- working stiffs and hoi polloi in general admission, swells in the reserved seats, and just outside the concrete walls, barefoot local kids climbed the hau trees for the gratis view, perched on boughs like avifauna in silhouette.
Description:
OK, I know it's two weeks in a row I recommended books about Hawaiian swimmers. But I just could not resist promoting Julie Checkoway's unique history of The Three-Year Swim Club: The Untold Story of Maui's Sugar Ditch Kids and Their Quest for Olympic Glory.
It is the incredible story of one man in the 1930s, Sochi Sakamoto, a non-swimming Japanese-American science teacher at a sugar cane plantation school on Maui, who taught Japanese children of sugar cane workers to swim. Using only his wits and a filthy 8' long and 4' deep irrigation ditch, Sakamoto's program helped these "ditch-wrigglers" advance to win numerous national swimming titles and even Olympic gold medals.
Sakamoto, who possessed only survival swimming skills himself, volunteered to supervise the plantation workers' children trying to cool off in a nearby irrigation ditch for one hour a day. Eventually, he showed them how to put their heads underwater, float, and eventually "speed float" by propelling themselves in any way they could against the current in the ditch of incoming water.
The 1930s were an era where swimming was of huge interest to the public, especially in Hawaii after the Olympic successes of Duke Kahanamoku and Johnny Weissmuller. Sakamoto read and observed these and other famous swimmers, including those competing in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and passed his knowledge on to his kids. He formed the "Three-Year Swim Club" (TYSC) with his best swimmers in 1937 with the sole purpose to train the for 1940 Tokyo Olympics.
The Three-Year Swim Club details the unbelievable rise of this coach and his swimmers (most of whom previously had never left their sugar cane plantation in Maui) from winning the Duke Kahanamoku Invitation in 1938 (where skinny, flailing Keo Nakama defeated Olympic silver-medalist Ralph Gilman) to national and international meets in Detroit, St. Louis, New Haven, Santa Barbara, Australia, Paris, London, and Berlin. Nakama eventually won 27 US National Championships in events ranging from 100 yards to 1500 meters and was the first to swim the 27 mile channel between the Hawaiian islands of Molokai and Oahu. Bill Smith, another TYSC member, won two Olympic gold medals in 1948, while several others went on to collegiate Big Ten and National championships in the 1940s with the powerhouse swimming teams of The Ohio State University.
The drive of Sakamoto, his creativity in designing unique (now common today) training techniques, and his inspiration to motivate his swimmers to triumph, permeates every page of this wonderful book. Facing both worldwide adulation at meets as well as racial discrimination against Japanese during the World War II era, the TYSC swimmers and coach represent an tenacious and inspirational group of individuals who seek only to swim, have fun, compete, and triumph over whatever the world throws at them.
Don't let this fascinating history be forgotten. Read this great book as soon as you can.
Happy reading.
It is the incredible story of one man in the 1930s, Sochi Sakamoto, a non-swimming Japanese-American science teacher at a sugar cane plantation school on Maui, who taught Japanese children of sugar cane workers to swim. Using only his wits and a filthy 8' long and 4' deep irrigation ditch, Sakamoto's program helped these "ditch-wrigglers" advance to win numerous national swimming titles and even Olympic gold medals.
Sakamoto, who possessed only survival swimming skills himself, volunteered to supervise the plantation workers' children trying to cool off in a nearby irrigation ditch for one hour a day. Eventually, he showed them how to put their heads underwater, float, and eventually "speed float" by propelling themselves in any way they could against the current in the ditch of incoming water.
The 1930s were an era where swimming was of huge interest to the public, especially in Hawaii after the Olympic successes of Duke Kahanamoku and Johnny Weissmuller. Sakamoto read and observed these and other famous swimmers, including those competing in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and passed his knowledge on to his kids. He formed the "Three-Year Swim Club" (TYSC) with his best swimmers in 1937 with the sole purpose to train the for 1940 Tokyo Olympics.
The Three-Year Swim Club details the unbelievable rise of this coach and his swimmers (most of whom previously had never left their sugar cane plantation in Maui) from winning the Duke Kahanamoku Invitation in 1938 (where skinny, flailing Keo Nakama defeated Olympic silver-medalist Ralph Gilman) to national and international meets in Detroit, St. Louis, New Haven, Santa Barbara, Australia, Paris, London, and Berlin. Nakama eventually won 27 US National Championships in events ranging from 100 yards to 1500 meters and was the first to swim the 27 mile channel between the Hawaiian islands of Molokai and Oahu. Bill Smith, another TYSC member, won two Olympic gold medals in 1948, while several others went on to collegiate Big Ten and National championships in the 1940s with the powerhouse swimming teams of The Ohio State University.
The drive of Sakamoto, his creativity in designing unique (now common today) training techniques, and his inspiration to motivate his swimmers to triumph, permeates every page of this wonderful book. Facing both worldwide adulation at meets as well as racial discrimination against Japanese during the World War II era, the TYSC swimmers and coach represent an tenacious and inspirational group of individuals who seek only to swim, have fun, compete, and triumph over whatever the world throws at them.
Don't let this fascinating history be forgotten. Read this great book as soon as you can.
Happy reading.
Fred
www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com
If this book interests you, be sure to check out:
Davis, David. Waterman: The Life and Times of Duke Kahanamoku
Brown, Daniel James. The Boys in the Boat
Davis, David. Showdown at Shepherd's Bush: The 1908 Olympic Marathon and the Three Runners Who Launched a Sporting Craze.
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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:
Davis, David. Waterman: The Life and Times of Duke Kahanamoku
History of Hawaii's greatest swimmer, surfer, and ambassador of the Aloha spirit in the early part of the twentieth century: Duke Kahanamoku. (previously reviewed here)
Brown, Daniel James. The Boys in the Boat
True story of the men who rowed to Olympic history and a gold medal in the Berlin Olympics in 1936.. (previously reviewed here)
Davis, David. Showdown at Shepherd's Bush: The 1908 Olympic Marathon and the Three Runners Who Launched a Sporting Craze.
Historical re-telling of the events of the 1908 Olympic marathon, the controversial finish (where one runner ran the wrong way in the stadium and was disqualified after being assisted by officials) and the training these pioneer runners endured.
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