David Davis - Waterman: The Life and Times of Duke Kahanamoku

If you spend any amount of time on Oahu, the third largest of the Hawaiian Islands, you cannot help but notice the name Duke Kahanamoku everywhere. Theres Duke Kahanamoku Lagoon, Duke Kahanamoku Beach, and the Duke Kahanamoku Aquatic Complex. Theres the annual Duke Kahanamoku long-distance canoe race and the annual OceanFest carnival, which raises money for scholarships for the Duke Kahanamoku Foundation and is held near Dukes, the popular tiki-themed restaurant and bar with a superb view of the ocean.

Not far from the restaurant, on the beach at Waikiki, stands an oversized statue of Duke Kahanamoku. He is depicted wearing swimming trunks, with a surfboard behind him. His arms are extended as if to welcome the many visitorstourists in T-shirts and sunglasses, surfers with dreadlocks, military personnel in uniformwho have stopped to take photos and read the accompanying plaque.

As statues are wont to do, the bronze figure casts an enormous shadow over its surroundings, sort of like the man himself. While he was alive, Duke Kahanamoku was Hawaiis favorite son. Until Barack Obama came along, no one born in Hawaii was more famous or revered than Duke Kahanamoku.

Legend is a tricky thing. Director John Ford, a friend of Dukes from his stint in Hollywood in the 1920s, addressed this conundrum in one of the last (and best) Westerns that he directed. The plot of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance revolves around an extended flashback concerning the fates of the two main characters in the movie (played by Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne).

A journalist asks Stewart, a successful elder statesman in the film, to discuss the long-ago incident during which he allegedly killed a scurrilous

Soon after his death in 1968 (or, perhaps, even before he passed away), the legend of Duke Kahanamoku supplanted the flesh-and-blood version. He officially competed in three Olympics, but reporters routinely stretched that number to four or five without supplying any concrete evidence. His famous Long Ride on a surfboard went from approximately one mile to one mile-and-a-half. He is said to have introduced surfing to Australia and the East Coast of the United States, even though others surfed there before him. Relatives of the worlds richest heiress, Doris Duke, claimed that Kahanamoku impregnated her, although that seems unlikely. Others have argued that he fulfilled a prophecy spoken by King Kamehameha, the unifier of the Hawaiian Islands, but it is doubtful that this prophecy was ever uttered.

As one of Kahanamokus relatives told me, with only some exaggeration, All that you now read bout the Duke is false, and for me to divulge the facts would place him in a shallow of the family worth. Let beliefs be if they help the progress of the entities of surfing and aloha, as they need a historical hero for commercialization.... Best to leave them to their wallows for it brings no harm and he is left the image of a hero.

Its easy to understand why Duke Kahanamoku continues to inspire such talk. His life was one epic ride. In 1890, when Kahanamoku was born, Hawaii was an independent nation. He was just a youngster when Hawaiis queen was overthrown in a hostile takeover that remains controversial to this day. He first gained fame while swimming for the United States at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, at a time when nonwhite athletes were barred from competing at the elite professional and amateur levels (with the exception of a few boxers, jockeys, and collegiate stars).

A dark-skinned man who represented the hopes and dreams of a predominantly white nation, Kahanamoku encountered and traversed racism and ignorance well before the likes of other pioneers (including Joe Louis, Jesse Owens, and Jackie Robinson). As his swimming success continued into the 1920s, he integrated private and public pools as well as surfing spots at exclusively white beaches. Photographs of Duke holding white women in his arms while they swam, or bearing them aloft on his powerful shoulders while they surfed tandem, appeared in newspapers around the country. He became the living embodiment of Hawaii and its exotic cultureand what a symbol! He was seen as the distillation of everything that was believed to be good about the Hawaiian people: humble yet powerful, sensual and healthy, gracious and noble.