Duke Kahanamoku

I recently watched a PBS documentary on Duke Kahanamoku, the Olympic swimmer and famous surfer from Hawaii. It's an episode of American Masters called "Waterman-- Duke: Ambassador of Aloha," and Jason Mamoa narrates it. I had never heard of Duke before and didn't know the history of surfing, so this was fascinating to watch. The show is organized around an old episode of This is Your Life honoring Duke.

Like Jim Thorpe, Duke was forced to attend a boarding school that tried to erase his native culture and forbid his native language. He dropped out of school to become a traditional waterman, who fished, swam, and knew all the traditional ways of living off the sea. He made his own surfboard out of wood and became a trainer at a local whites-only sports club. They invited him to a swimming competition and he broke a world record, but skeptical sports officials insisted that it had to be fluke or mistake with the stopwatch; they wanted him to prove his skill again with elite white swimmers. So the Hawaiian community raised money to send him to the mainland US to compete, and he got a coach, and eventually entered the Olympics where he could finally prove himself according to the European standards.

Because of the Olympic rules about athletes having to be amateurs, Duke found it hard to find work, so his community had to support him, or he had to try various non-swimming jobs, like movie acting. But of course Hollywood only gave him bit parts and would not make him a leading man. He experienced a lot of racial discrimination in his life, but he didn't complain, living by a philosophy to keep it in his heart and bottle things up. It's sad, but at least he did make many genuine friends and helped break down racial barriers with his sheer talent and goodness. Duke was also highly influential in popularizing surfing in Australia, and saved many people from drowning. Really good documentary for Asian American Pacific Islander month.