Honolulu Weekly

The Three Year Swim Club. / Writer Lee Tonouchi is no stranger to an underdog story. For starters, he’s made a career of preserving and legitimizing Pidgin in literature. In his latest venture, he aims to conserve a different slice of Hawaiian history, the story of a scrappy swim team from Maui in the 1930s.

“I first heard the story when I was in my twenties and I was surprised I had never heard it before,” says Tonouchi. “I began asking my friends from Maui about it and they didn’t know the story either.”

Now, Tonouchi has teamed up with the Honolulu Theatre for Youth to present his play, The Three Year Swim Club. The production dramatizes the story of science teacher Soichi Sakamoto, who decided to start a swim club despite being a marginal swimmer himself. Without enough money to gain access to private pools, Sakamoto trained his swimmers in irrigation ditches, against the current, where they built up strength like salmon going upriver. He also encouraged his athletes to weight-train, an unusual choice in those days.

“[Weight training was] a practice not used by swimmers at the time,” says Tonouchi. “It was believed hard muscles made an athlete less flexible in the water.”

Sakamoto then set the audacious goal of competing in the 1940 Olympics in Helsinki, a mere three years from when the team started. World War II interrupted the games, but Sakamoto’s swimmers went on to break records against top-level competitors in the Waikiki Natatorium, then on the national scene, before going on to make waves globally, bringing home medals from subsequent Olympics. Stage-adapting Sakamoto’s story was no easy feat.

“The original play had more characters and scenes,” says Tonouchi. “We had to cut [them] out to make it more manageable for the theatre.”

But one critical element that Tonouchi says he feared might not translate to the stage–the swimming–was incorporated into the play. Initially, Tonouchi says he didn’t think they’d be able to find a way to convey the swimming parts of the story. Then, he began envisioning what he calls “surreal swimming using rhythm and movement.” Those visions were brought to life with rigorous choreography and creative props, both of which add a visual punch to the emotional peaks of the play. While technically impressive, it’s the nature of the story itself that made it appeal most to theater staff.

“The play fits perfectly with the theater’s mission,” says Eric Johnson, HTY’s artistic director. “We’re aiming to tell great stories from the local community.”

Johnson also notes the relationship between Sakamoto and his pupils as an inspiration for teachers, coaches and other mentors. This theme is uniquely explored in the play, as the character of Sakamoto is channeled through each member of the team at different points rather than having a single separate actor portray the coach.

Few people understand this relationship as well as Bill Smith, an original member of the real-life swim club. He remembers Sakamoto as a “strict disciplinarian and great motivator.”

Originally a resident of Honolulu, Smith moved to Maui to train with the team after spending 10 days swimming for Sakamoto on a state squad. He went on to compete for Ohio State University and won two gold medals in the 1948 Olympics. He will attend the February 5 premiere of the show and see the character “Bill Smith” for the first time.

“We were disappointed we wouldn’t get to compete in the [Helsinki] Olympics but Coach Sakamato reminded us that was the way life was sometimes,” says Smith. “He really motivated us to keep going and we were able to continue and do great things.”