‘Coach’ Sakamoto’s vision put Maui swimmers on world map

Nearly 50 years ago, the 1964 Tokyo Olympics transformed Japan’s global image from a defeated, war-ruined landscape to a modern, economically advanced nation.

The recently announced 2020 Tokyo Olympics holds a special appeal for Hawaii’s population, since many residents have Japanese ethnic and cultural ties. Already, from Hanapepe to Hilo, people are planning to attend the second Tokyo Olympics.

Historically, the 1940 Summer Olympics was to be held in Tokyo, but due to the Japanese military invasion of China, the Olympics Committee awarded the Games to Helsinki, the runner-up city in the original bidding process.

In 1937, when the Olympics’ Helsinki site was announced, Soichi Sakamoto, a Puunene Camp school teacher, startled other teachers by stating boldly that in three short years, Maui swimmers would compete in the Olympic Games.

Everything in pre-war Maui could be listed as reasons showing this proposal was ridiculous, or even insane. Maui had a population of barely 45,000, and was not even the population center of Hawaii, a tiny U.S. territory that wasn’t even a full-fledged state. Some Mauians had traveled to Honolulu, a few to Los Angeles, and only a very few could point to Helsinki on a globe.

Furthermore, a Maui plantation worker’s child was not supposed to travel half-way across the world to rub shoulders, literally, with British or Italian athletes.

This equal interaction meant that Maui’s stratified plantation society with limited social mobility would be turned upside-down by Mauian youth at an Olympics competition in Helsinki.

Adding to the long "negatives" list against any Mauian Olympics success, "Coach" Sakamoto was not trained as a sports instructor — nor did he even know how to swim — but lack of certification did not stop his quest with Maui youth.

After years observing plantation workers and their daily schedules, he had analyzed motivation and incremental speed training — without any books. He was, in today’s vocabulary, a "driven" personality who did his thinking "outside the box."

For a swimming pool, he simply borrowed a plantation irrigation ditch as his training center.

He taught interval training — marking off segments of the ditch — a precursor of advanced swimming techniques today, as well as swimming against the current (now used at many Olympics training centers).

Finally, he instilled focus on the Helsinki Olympics as a personal goal for dozens of Maui teenagers in his Three-Year Swim Club, including Keo Nakama, who later swam the Auau Channel between Molokai and Oahu, in 1961, when he was 41 years old.

To the surprise of many, the Maui team won U.S. National championships in 1939, which was seen as a one-time fluke — but they won again in 1940, and in 1941. Although the team members deservedly earned slots on the U.S. Olympics swimming team, World War II canceled the Helsinki Olympic Games.

More than a decade after the Three-Year Swim Club was launched, Saka-moto’s swimmers captured medals in the 1952 Olympic Games, finally held in Helsinki.

In the period leading to Hawaii’s statehood in 1959, this moment must have made Mauians see themselves as global citizens who could fulfill Olympics-sized dreams.

Seventy-six years later, Sakamoto’s Olympics vision articulated at dusty Puunene Camp still captures our imagination.

What he did on a resource-poor, isolated island, without government funding or private venture capital, remains one of the most inspirational Hawaii feats of sports heroism of the 20th century.

While waving at national teams marching at a Tokyo stadium in 2020, Hawaii residents should recall the enormous sacrifices and commit- ment of Maui plantation teenagers who had the audacity to imagine themselves in a European capital competing against other Olympians and winning a gold medal.