The Indomitable Duke Kahanamoku

A little-remembered vendetta by Honolulu’s business elite—including its top tourist promoter and most powerful newspaper—against Hawai‘i’s and the United States’ multiple Olympic gold medal winner lasted for years and crippled him economically. But Duke’s principled and crafty resistance would bring him vindication at home, lead to a second career in Hollywood, and a heroic rescue that changed lifesaving.

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Death was easing its grip.

In the fall of 1919, Hawai‘i was regaining a sense of equilibrium after the brutal exigencies of World War I and the influenza pandemic that had taken so many lives around the world.

Duke Kahanamoku, O‘ahu’s most prominent citizen, was recovering from a severe bout of influenza contracted in Washington, D.C. in 1918. If former girlfriend Bernyece Smith hadn’t discovered him holed up in a YMCA and arranged for his hospitalization, he might not have lived. Twenty pounds lighter when he came home to Honolulu, he opened the newspaper April 7, 1919 to read that his longtime friend George Freeth, the Hawaiian waterman who’d introduced surfing to California, had succumbed to the same flu at age thirty-five.

Kahanamoku burst onto the sports scene eight years previously, when the then-unheralded Native Hawaiian waterman shattered several world records at a swim meet in Honolulu harbor. The following year, he represented the United States at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics and won the gold medal in the 100 meters, an achievement that filled his family and every Hawaiian with prideful joy.

Duke’s Olympic triumph turned him into the face of the Territory. His handsome visage and chiseled body were splashed on magazine covers, oftentimes wearing only swimming trunks. Haole business leaders sponsored his travels to Australia and to the mainland, ostensibly so that he could compete in major international swim meets.

But Hawai‘i’s elite had an ulterior motive: they sent him to events like the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, held in San Francisco in 1915, to promote the Territory’s nascent tourism industry. After registering swimming victories at the Sutro Baths, Duke reported to the Hawaiian Building, where he performed hula, played the ukulele, and posed for photos wearing traditional garb.

At a time when few people had traveled to Hawai‘i, and fewer still had encountered a Native Hawaiian in the flesh, Duke’s forays proved to be a resounding success, especially after he helped introduce surfing and beach volleyball on the mainland and in Australia. The Pacific Commercial Advertiser newspaper, owned by publisher Lorrin A. Thurston, editorialized that Kahanamoku was “a credit to his race, to his native islands, and to those who started him upon the road to sobriety, without which his name would not today be blazoned upon the athletic honor role.” (1)

As for Duke’s reward? In the amateur-only days of Olympic sport, he was not allowed to monetize his athletic skills or fame. He could not sign lucrative endorsement deals, nor could he earn a living as a swimming instructor. If he was caught violating these rules, he would be exiled from the Olympics and amateur competition. The sad case of Jim Thorpe, Duke’s teammate on the 1912 U.S. team, was seen as a cautionary tale. Thorpe won two events in Stockholm, but his gold medals were stripped after news leaked that he had played minor-league baseball for money.

Hawai‘i’s sports leaders and tourism boosters, primarily haole, wanted Duke to remain an amateur, for reasons both selfish and altruistic. Kahanamoku was valuable to them “as a promotion asset,” (2) because his prowess in the pool and his endearing personality helped to publicize the Islands at his appearances around the world. They also reasoned that, with Duke’s inexperience in business matters, turning pro might not yield the fortune that fast-talking promoters were whispering about in his ear.

“Kahanamoku’s pictures ‘will be as much sought after throughout the world as those of Douglas Fairbanks, Tom Mix or any of the other athletic screen actors who do their ‘dare-devil’ stunts on land...’”

That didn’t stop the citizens of Hawai‘i from raising money to buy property for Duke on Waikīkī, on Ala Moana Street near the corner of Kalia Road, next to land owned by his ancestral Paoa family. This was a clear violation of the rules, but apparently this transaction went unremarked. Nobody tattled. In this case, Duke was able to keep his Olympic eligibility and the property even as he flouted the strict rules of amateurism.

Still, there was always a quo for the quid. In the prime of his youth, Duke’s life and career were controlled by others who didn’t always have his best interests at heart. The arrangement left him beholden to the desires of Hawai‘i’s all-powerful sports officials – and this was something that they never let him forget.

That became abundantly clear as Duke, his body weakened by influenza, prepared for the hastily scheduled 1920 Antwerp Olympics. (The 1916 Berlin Olympics were cancelled due to the war.) His workout regimen would be considered cross-training today, with equal parts rowing, paddling, surfing, and swimming, with some beach volleyball and water polo thrown in. But as the 29-year-old battled Father Time, he was shocked to read an ad hominem attack published in Thurston’s Pacific Commercial Advertiser.

Under the headline “Duke P. Kahanamoku Quits Cold,” the article lambasted Duke for withdrawing from a scheduled swim meet in Honolulu because, he told organizers, he wasn’t prepared to compete. Sportswriter Leonard Withington wrote that the swimmer had offered up a “silly excuse” to the public. “Duke sulks in his tent and talks about muscles. What he needs is backbone,” Withington commented. “The quitting of Duke will be heralded far and wide in the press… The chance of his being sent to the Olympics in 1920 is gone and Hawai‘i will be ready to welcome some new swimming idol who is worthy to represent her in the water.” (3)

Observers of the labyrinthine customs of Hawai‘i sensed Thurston’s influence behind the attack. The powerful publisher of the Advertiser was the grandson of one of the first missionary families to come to Hawai‘i in the early 1800s. He also was a key instigator in the illegal overthrow of Queen Lili‘uokalani in 1893. By 1919, Thurston and others on the Hawaiian Promotion Committee were planning to launch a Pacific Olympiad, with Hawai‘i as the centerpiece, and were counting on Kahanamoku’s fame to turn the proposal into reality.

“Our whole program, intended to make the Crossroads of the Pacific the swimming capital of the world, will fall like a pack of cards when it is known that our swimming idol has feet of clay, and that we are too blind to see it,” Withington’s diatribe against Duke concluded. (4)

The mild-mannered Kahanamoku usually shrugged off criticism. If he believed that he had been wronged or insulted, he shunned the person and did not mention his name again. But public disparagement in a popular newspaper called for a more forceful response, and so Duke filed a libel suit, charging that the Advertiser brought him “into disgrace, abhorrence, odium, hatred, contempt and/or ridicule, among the people of the Territory of Hawaii, the United States of America, and the people elsewhere, and for the purpose of causing him to be excluded from society of said peoples, and with the intent wickedly, viciously and maliciously to injure him personally in his good name, fame, reputation and character, as a swimmer, amateur athlete and otherwise.”

In asking for $50,000 in damages, Duke was challenging one of the most powerful personages in the Territory of Hawai‘i, moreover one who owned a newspaper and could conjure up a defamatory headline for breakfast. But Kahanamoku felt that he had to stand up for himself and his family’s reputation, even at a high personal cost.

Perhaps his critics lit a fire under Duke. He re-doubled his efforts to qualify for the 1920 Antwerp Olympics. His stamina returned, as did his speed, and in a direct rebuke to Thurston and others, he was selected to represent the United States in Belgium. His magnetic influence resonated among his Island compatriots; besides Kahanamoku, six other Hawaiian swimmers were named to the American swim team (including Helen Moses, one of the first female swimmers to compete for the U.S.). Indeed, the swimming competition at the 1920 Olympics would essentially pit Hawai‘i versus the rest of the world.

Their tenacity was put to the test almost immediately. They sailed on the Princess Matoika, a merchant ship that had been used to transport troops overseas during the war. The bodies and remains of 1,800 dead soldiers had just been unloaded when the athletes boarded the vessel. A journey that usually lasted one week took two weeks instead, amid the overpowering stench of formaldehyde.

On board, Duke and the others trained in a small canvas tank filled with seawater. The athletes “swam” in place while strapped to two belts. At night, Duke and the Hawaiians strummed their ukuleles and sang melodies that delighted their teammates.

The conditions in Antwerp were a disaster for the athletes. The outdoor pool was formerly a city moat and filled partially with black mud. The water was brain-numbingly cold. There were no towels; the dressing rooms were inadequate.

Kahanamoku refused to let the distractions or the competition affect his performance. He was entered in two events, the 100 meters and the 4x200 meter relay, and won two gold medals. His victory in the 100 came eight years after his triumph in the same race in 1912, a remarkable achievement for any athlete. His efforts, as well as those by his Hawaiian teammates, helped the United States easily win the overall medal count.

Redemption was sweet. He’d proven all the naysayers wrong, in and out of the pool. His comeback—from illness, from obsolescence, from ridicule—was complete. As peace settled across Europe and the United States swept into the Roaring Twenties, Kahanamoku was again atop the swimming world.

He returned home a hero, but he had little else to show for his success. He took odd jobs around O‘ahu and fell back on the old standby of taking tourists and celebrities out into the ocean and showing them the joys of swimming, surfing, and canoeing. It was a hand-to-mouth existence. “I’d like a nickel for every hour of free swimming or surfing instruction I’ve given to people who didn’t stick around long enough to say thanks,” he said. “Really trying to make a living out there could be a grubby existence, at least for me.”

A bitter realization brewed within. “Out of the water I am nothing,” he repeated to himself. (6)

His libel suit against the Pacific Commercial Advertiser was working its way through the judicial system. The stress from the lawsuit and the lack of decent employment opportunities on O‘ahu left him with little choice: Hawai‘i no longer felt like aloha. For the first time in his life, Duke would move away from his birthplace and his ‘ohana to seek his fortune elsewhere.

His immediate destination was Los Angeles. Like many others before and after him, Duke hoped to make a splash in Hollywood. A manager-promoter identified as Dr. Oscar Henning proclaimed that he was going to make Duke “as world famous on the screen as he is a swimmer” via a series of action movies. According to Henning. the first production was to be an epic biopic starring Kahanamoku as King Kamehameha, the conqueror-unifier of the Hawaiian Islands.

Kahanamoku’s pictures “will be as much sought after throughout the world as those of Douglas Fairbanks, Tom Mix or any of the other athletic screen actors who do their ‘dare-devil’ stunts on land,” Henning said. (7)

But the color barrier in film production loomed as large as the newly erected “Hollywoodland” sign in the hills above Los Angeles. Every major star in the silent era—male or female—was white, as was every studio chief, producer, and director. That unfortunate reality burst Duke’s celluloid dreams. He appeared in approximately two-dozen movies (many of these were lost or destroyed), but was typecast as a mere “ethnic” extra. He played a range of characters that appeared briefly on-screen, from a Native American Indian to an Arab pirate to a Mexican caballero. He even stunt-doubled as a bodysurfing South Seas princess.

“Duke didn’t hesitate. He grabbed his wooden surfboard and plunged into the water. He grabbed one man and wrestled him onto the surfboard, and then another, and then a third.”

His stint living away from Hawai‘i was not without accomplishment, especially on the sandy beaches of Southern California. In the early 1920s, the idea that surfing might become an official Olympic sport was absurd; only a handful of people outside of Hawaii had ever seen a surfboard, much less surfed. Duke encouraged novitiates to try surfing, and his Johnny Appleseed-like presence helped popularize surfing as he and his enormous wooden board sampled virginal spots along the coastline, from San Diego to Newport Beach to Santa Monica to Malibu. He also renewed acquaintance with a young acolyte named Tom Blake. Their surfing forays led Blake to travel to Hawai‘i and study the craft of board-shaping. Under Duke’s tutelage, Blake became a preeminent surfing historian, ambassador and boardmaker.

Meanwhile, as a member of the Los Angeles Athletic Club, Duke stayed in racing shape by competing at local swim meets. Even as he aged, his times were still among the best in the world, and so he decided to take for one last shot at Olympic glory at the 1924 Paris Games. His main competition? An upstart, Chicago-based swimmer named Johnny Weissmuller.

Cocky, sleek, and well-coached, Weissmuller was the jazz age personified. Duke was old school: reserved and circumspect. Despite their differences, they respected one another’s skills and enjoyed each other’s company. Their clash in Paris, at Le Stade Nautique des Tourelles, would determine who was the world’s fastest swimmer.

Duke summoned his strength, but the youthful Weissmuller easily outlasted the 33-year-old Kahanamoku. Duke took the silver medal, while his younger brother Sam took the bronze for an American medal sweep. Weissmuller, the new king of the pool, went on to earn several more gold medals at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics—and to Hollywood glory as Tarzan.

His Olympic career pau, Kahanamoku returned to Los Angeles and continued to work sporadically in Hollywood. In mid-June of 1925, after shooting a two-reeler starring comedian Charley Chase, Duke ventured to Corona del Mar, one of his favorite surf spots. He woke early in the morning to dangerously choppy waves and watched from the beach in amazement and then disbelief as a fishing vessel attempted to reach open water. A monstrous swell slammed the ship, destroying the rigging and the mast. Passengers and crew were swept into the frothy sea.

Duke didn’t hesitate. He grabbed his wooden surfboard and plunged into the water. He grabbed one man and wrestled him onto the surfboard, and then another, and then a third. He maneuvered the board toward the safety of the beach with urgent kicks.

Twice more, Duke ventured out to rescue survivors from the battered boat until he could do no more. Five men perished that morning; Duke personally saved the lives of eight men. He humbly declined to take credit for his heroism. “I don’t know [what I did],” he said. “It was done. That is the main thing. By a few tricks, perhaps.” (8)

His modesty notwithstanding, Duke’s life-saving work changed the perception of the surfboard as a recreational oddity from Hawai‘i. Lifeguard services around the world began to keep boards at guard watchtowers and to supply rescue training with the boards, in the process saving countless lives of adults and children.

In the seven years Duke Kahanamoku lived in California, he accomplished many feats: saving lives, bringing surfing to the world, winning medals at the Olympics, carving out a workingman’s career in Hollywood, even promoting Hawai‘i. He could’ve stayed there and parlayed his reputation for the rest of his life.

But the spirit of Hawai‘i was in his blood, and he couldn’t stay away. When the “Ambassador of Aloha” returned home, he struggled at first to find his place. In the mid-1930s, supported by members of both political parties, he ran for Sheriff of Honolulu. He won easily, and held that post for many years, through the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 and statehood for Hawai‘i in 1959.

He also lent his name to a successful nightclub in Waikīkī, represented the Outrigger Canoe Club in local rowing and canoeing races, attended the Olympics Games in Melbourne (1956) and Tokyo (1964), and ushered in the modern era of surf contests, before he died at the age of 77 in 1968. Notwithstanding the controversy over Hawaiian representation at this summer’s surfing competition in Tokyo, he surely would’ve been delighted about surfing’s status as an Olympic sport.

Also, Kahanamoku finally won his libel suit against the Pacific Commercial Advertiser and Lorrin Thurston. Though the court awarded minimal damages, he came out on top here, too, by following his principles.

Today, his Olympic swimming legacy is overshadowed by the achievements of Weissmuller, Mark Spitz, and Michael Phelps. But his immense legacy in Hawai‘i, what he once called the “navel of the world,” forever endures. As the first Hawaiian to compete in the Olympics, and as the first Pacific Islander to win athletic glory in the modern era, he redefined what it meant to be an American. He gave native Hawaiians a symbol of power, of mana, to believe in when they had few leaders or heroes. That he emerged from a campaign to discredit and defame him still so gracious, so regal, was his salvation and his strength.

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FOOTNOTES
1. Pacific Commercial Advertiser, July 11, 1912.
2. Maui News, Nov. 30, 1912.
3. PCA, Oct. 29, 1919.
4. Ibid.
5. Duke P. Kahanamoku v. Advertiser Publishing Company, No. 1277, Circuit Court First Circuit, 1920.
6. Joe Brennan, Duke of Hawaii. New York: Ballantine Books, 1968, page 122.
7. Riverside Independent, Jan. 23, 1922.
8. Balboa Times, June 16, 1925.

Banner image by Ryunosuke Kikuno. Author image by Robert Levins.