Laderman - Empire in waves: a political history of surfing

Empire in Waves

Empire in Waves

A POLITICAL HISTORY OF SURFING

Scott Laderman

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

BERKELEYLOSANGELESLONDON

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

2014 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Laderman, Scott, 1971

Empire in waves : a political history of surfing / Scott Laderman.

p. cm. (Sport in the world ; 1)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-520-27910-0 (hardcover: alk.paper)ISBN 978-0-520-27911-7 (pbk.:alk.paper)

eISBN 9780520958043

1. SurfingHistory. 2. SurfingPolitical aspects. I. Title.

GV840.S8L33 2014

797.3'2dc23

2013032583

Manufactured in the United States of America

23222120191817161514

10987654321

In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on Natures Natural, a fiber that contains 30% post-consumer waste and meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992 (R 1997) ( Permanence of Paper ).

For Izzy and Sam

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

I had the privilege of growing up near the beach in California. I learned to surf in Santa Monica, where I was born, and spent countless hours chasing waves up and down the coast. After high school I moved north, enjoying a couple of years in Santa Cruz before leaving for the Bay Area, where I spent much of my free time surfing at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. I now live about as far from the ocean as one can live in the United States. Yet I still regularly surf. As ridiculous as it may sound, my adopted hometown of Duluth, Minnesota, enjoys probably the best waves in the Midwest. It may be colder, less consistent, and smaller than California, but I still find the pleasure and solace in Lake Superior that I found in my younger years in the Pacific. Surfing, in other words, has been important to me for the better part of my life. As has history. I first consciously began to conceptualize Empire in Waves in 1993, when, as a university student, I spent the summer as an editorial intern at Orange Countybased Surfer magazine. It was a tough commute from L.A., particularly when waiting tables at night, but what an experience. I worked with great people, joined the editors for periodic surf breaks, and claimed my first publicationa brief article on a Pearl Jam benefit for Aaron Ahearn, a young surfer and sailor in the U.S. Navy who was disciplined for going AWOL and blowing the whistle on the Navys practice of dumping garbage offshore. I was also, at that time, becoming increasingly active in human rights issues. I soon found myself presented with an intellectual conundrum. As an activist I knew a fair bit about Indonesia and its occupation of East Timor. As a surfer I knew a lot about Indonesia but nothing about the occupation of East Timor. Why? My attempt to answer that question represents the origins of this book.

Not many people have the opportunity to make a living by combining their personal and academic interests. I recognize my good fortune and the debt I owe to those many friends and colleagues who made it possible. I want to first thank John Hamlin, Eileen Zeitz, and the University Education Association for their seemingly inexhaustible energy and assistance in trying times. And I thank Sue Maher, dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota, Duluth (UMD), for her moral and financial support. I am also indebted for research assistance to the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations; the Graduate School, the McKnight Arts and Humanities Endowment, and the Imagine Fund of the University of Minnesota; and the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at UMD.

Research for this project has required the use of sources that are not the typical fare of historians, and numerous people helped me locate and access them in recent years. I am grateful to Barry Haun, Becky Church, Dick Metz, and Tom Pezman at the Surfing Heritage Foundation (now the Surfing Heritage and Culture Center) in San Clemente, California; Gary Sahagen at the International Surfing Museum in Huntington Beach, California; and Craig Baird at Surf World in Torquay, Victoria, Australia. Craig was also a generous host during my stay in Torquay, having me over for dinner and taking me out for a much-needed surf. Al Hunt has perhaps the worlds largest collection of Surfing magazines, and he generously provided me with access to his extensive archive. Al and his wife Andrea also invited me into their home in New South Wales, where they introduced me to Paul Scott. I thankall three of them, as well as Craig, for the kindness they showed this traveling American.

Both Craig and Al assisted me as I collected the illustrations for this book. So, too, did Verity Chambers, Cori Schumacher, Maria Cerda, Peter Simons, Stu Nettle at Swellnet , Luke Kennedy at Tracks magazine, JeffDivine at the Surfers Journal , JeffHall at A-Frame Media, Sunshine Carter in the UMD Library, and Dustin Thompson in the UMD Visualization and Digital Imaging Lab. They have my deep appreciation.

I visited several archives in Hawaii. I am grateful for the assistance I received at the Bishop Museum from Charley Myers, Tia Reber, and Ju Sun Yi; at the Hawaii State Archives from Gina S. Vergara-Bautista and Luella Kurkjian; and at the University of Hawaii at Manoa from Dore Minatodani, Jodie Mattos, and Sherman Seki. My friend Hoku Aikau was a wonderful host during my Hawaiian stay, as was Ed Coates, who lent me equipment and took me out for some small but fun waves near Waikiki. In California, Barbara Hall at the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was, as always, tremendously helpful. So, too, was the Herrick Librarys desk staffand, up north, that of the Pacific Film Archive at the University of California, Berkeley. At the National Archives II in College Park, Mary land, I was aided by Edward O. Barnes and David A. Pfeiffer. Cory Czajkowski helped me navigate the Pan Am papers at the University of Miami. Sue Hodson of the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, and Clint Pumphrey at Utah State University helped me from a long distance with their institutions Jack London materials. Kristi Rudelius-Palmer and Mary Rumsey made possible my research in the Human Rights Library of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. And Kay Westergren, the interlibrary loan specialist at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, ably and amiably fielded my many requests.