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A review by carolpk
The Three-Year Swim Club: The Untold Story of Maui's Sugar Ditch Kids and Their Quest for Olympic Glory by Julie Checkoway
5.0
To think if it had not been for the curiosity, perseverance and skill of Julie Checkoway, I would never have experienced, nor known about this hiccup of history. I’m not a die hard sports fan of any sort, rarely watch either the Winter or Summer Olympics, don’t know the athletes by name but there is something that draws me to stories like The Three-Year Swim Club: The Untold Story of Maui's Sugar Ditch Kids and Their Quest for Olympic Glory, in which a group of young people, from poor, hard-working families, with no special equipment or skills, can rise to a challenge. Who are these kids? Did they succeed? Why did the author want to tell their story? And always important for me, who did they then become? Ms. Checkoway answers my questions in this well researched, fascinating, easy to read narrative
From the dedication to the very last page, Checkoway held me captive. Right from the beginning she sets the stage with an overview and description of Maui, and its fertile land, once consisting of 30,000 acres of sugarcane, home to 80,000 persons living in
“13 segregated labor camps in a village called Pu’unene.”
Today, only one sugar plantation remains; easily identified by the landmark of the two remaining smokestacks. Checkoway allows me to see it then and to see it now. She resurrects an inkling of a story that had almost disappeared and gives it life. It was 1932 when a schoolteacher, Soichi Sakamoto, a man not able to swim himself, teaches a group of under-privileged Japanese-American camp kids to swim, not in a fancy pool, but in the plantation’s dirty irrigation ditch. Imagine this.
She vividly describes what she first sees when she visits the deteriorated property. As she contemplates a wall of signs, a minor remembrance of the past she thinks:
” The plantation owns those signs, but who, I wondered owned the disappearing story that, in part, they tell? The story of the teacher and the children lives now in so few places: on that weather-beaten wall, in scrapbooks filled with photographs. History isn’t a sculptured cup; it’s more like a sieve through which so many stories pass and disappear.”
Checkoway makes me understand the urgency to record these stories, to create a written history of this spirited group of teens. Many were old and some had already passed away. There are stories within stories to be told. I want to share so many with you but then there would be no need for you to read this yourself. Checkoway focuses on a few key boys and one girl, but also weaves in the story of many others. There are the swimmers, their parents, Sakomoto, his wife and daughters, the benefactors, those who believed and those who didn’t that it was possible for these kids to win, not only in small meets, but Olympic Gold. There is the quest to somehow bring these under-weight, under-nourished, ramshackle kids in hand-me-down swimsuits, to the 1940 Summer Games, only to have that hope crushed by the outbreak of World War II. The interruption of the war, the internment of many Japanese-Americans, the financial and subtle political barriers tried but could not dampen the spirit of Sakamoto and his kids. I was absorbed by the unique style of training Sakamoto used, one that was grueling and required a firm three year commitment by the kids. I was amazed that some of his boys trained sailors to swim during the war when it was realized that "fifty percent of the Navy couldn’t swim."
I can picture these children, their bony, shivering bodies leaving the water, without even a towel to dry off with or to keep them warm. I can see the wonder on their faces as they journeyed from their home to far away places in the world, by ship, rail, buses and even air. I can feel their pride in their accomplishments. I am impressed by their sheer will and determination to stick with the program. I can feel their sorrow when Pearl Harbor is bombed and they are no longer seen as the Americans they are. I can cheer them on as some finally make it to the 1948 Olympics to represent America.
Checkoway humbly credits her book, not to her passion to write it,
”but because so many people have been so largehearted in helping me find my way in doing so.”
We are the lucky recipients of her quest to not let this story be forgotten. Don’t miss this. Julie Checkoway has written a winner in every sense of the word.
From the dedication to the very last page, Checkoway held me captive. Right from the beginning she sets the stage with an overview and description of Maui, and its fertile land, once consisting of 30,000 acres of sugarcane, home to 80,000 persons living in
“13 segregated labor camps in a village called Pu’unene.”
Today, only one sugar plantation remains; easily identified by the landmark of the two remaining smokestacks. Checkoway allows me to see it then and to see it now. She resurrects an inkling of a story that had almost disappeared and gives it life. It was 1932 when a schoolteacher, Soichi Sakamoto, a man not able to swim himself, teaches a group of under-privileged Japanese-American camp kids to swim, not in a fancy pool, but in the plantation’s dirty irrigation ditch. Imagine this.
She vividly describes what she first sees when she visits the deteriorated property. As she contemplates a wall of signs, a minor remembrance of the past she thinks:
” The plantation owns those signs, but who, I wondered owned the disappearing story that, in part, they tell? The story of the teacher and the children lives now in so few places: on that weather-beaten wall, in scrapbooks filled with photographs. History isn’t a sculptured cup; it’s more like a sieve through which so many stories pass and disappear.”
Checkoway makes me understand the urgency to record these stories, to create a written history of this spirited group of teens. Many were old and some had already passed away. There are stories within stories to be told. I want to share so many with you but then there would be no need for you to read this yourself. Checkoway focuses on a few key boys and one girl, but also weaves in the story of many others. There are the swimmers, their parents, Sakomoto, his wife and daughters, the benefactors, those who believed and those who didn’t that it was possible for these kids to win, not only in small meets, but Olympic Gold. There is the quest to somehow bring these under-weight, under-nourished, ramshackle kids in hand-me-down swimsuits, to the 1940 Summer Games, only to have that hope crushed by the outbreak of World War II. The interruption of the war, the internment of many Japanese-Americans, the financial and subtle political barriers tried but could not dampen the spirit of Sakamoto and his kids. I was absorbed by the unique style of training Sakamoto used, one that was grueling and required a firm three year commitment by the kids. I was amazed that some of his boys trained sailors to swim during the war when it was realized that "fifty percent of the Navy couldn’t swim."
I can picture these children, their bony, shivering bodies leaving the water, without even a towel to dry off with or to keep them warm. I can see the wonder on their faces as they journeyed from their home to far away places in the world, by ship, rail, buses and even air. I can feel their pride in their accomplishments. I am impressed by their sheer will and determination to stick with the program. I can feel their sorrow when Pearl Harbor is bombed and they are no longer seen as the Americans they are. I can cheer them on as some finally make it to the 1948 Olympics to represent America.
Checkoway humbly credits her book, not to her passion to write it,
”but because so many people have been so largehearted in helping me find my way in doing so.”
We are the lucky recipients of her quest to not let this story be forgotten. Don’t miss this. Julie Checkoway has written a winner in every sense of the word.