The Three-Year Swim Club: The Untold Story of Maui's Sugar Ditch Kids and Their Quest for Olympic Glory
Written by Julie Checkoway
Narrated by Alex Chadwick
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
For listeners of Unbroken and The Boys in the Boat comes the inspirational, untold story of impoverished children who transformed themselves into world-class swimmers.
In 1937, a schoolteacher on the island of Maui challenged a group of poverty-stricken sugar plantation kids to swim upstream against the current of their circumstance. The goal? To become Olympians.
They faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles. The children were Japanese-American, were malnourished and barefoot and had no pool; they trained in the filthy irrigation ditches that snaked down from the mountains into the sugarcane fields. Their future was in those same fields, working alongside their parents in virtual slavery, known not by their names but by numbered tags that hung around their necks. Their teacher, Soichi Sakamoto, was an ordinary man whose swimming ability didn't extend much beyond treading water.
In spite of everything, including the virulent anti-Japanese sentiment of the late 1930s, in their first year the children outraced Olympic athletes twice their size; in their second year, they were national and international champs, shattering American and world records and making headlines from L.A. to Nazi Germany. In their third year, they'd be declared the greatest swimmers in the world, but they'd also face their greatest obstacle: the dawning of a world war and the cancellation of the Games. Still, on the battlefield, they'd become the 20th century's most celebrated heroes, and in 1948, they'd have one last chance for Olympic glory.
They were the Three-Year Swim Club. This is their story.
Related to The Three-Year Swim Club
Related audiobooks
Flooded: Requiem for Johnstown (Scholastic Gold) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Shoe Boy: A Trapline Memoir Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBig Wednesday Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHouse of the Red Fish Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5War of the Whales: A True Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Castle Rock Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBahama Crisis Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5My Name Is Not Easy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shigemi Shiukichi: A Japanese Boy: A Japanese boy's normal happy life in the early 1900s Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBay Curious: Exploring the Hidden True Stories of the San Francisco Bay Area Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhat's Great about Massachusetts? Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNorth by Northwestern: A Seafaring Family on Deadly Alaskan Waters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Downeast: Five Maine Girls and the Unseen Story of Rural America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jumping Into PNG Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhen We Were on Fire: A Memoir of Consuming Faith, Tangled Love, and Starting Over Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Few Red Drops: The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWe Didn't Ask for This Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The State Must Provide: Why America's Colleges Have Always Been Unequal—and How to Set Them Right Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shopping All the Way to the Woods: How the Outdoor Industry Sold Nature to America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLearn Filipino - Level 5: Advanced Filipino, Volume 1: Lessons 1-50 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJamaica Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWe Are Water Protectors: (Caldecott Medal Winner) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Birth of The Endless Summer: A Surf Odyssey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5From Scratch: Adventures in Harvesting, Hunting, Fishing, and Foraging on a Fragile Planet Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPlastic Ocean: How a Sea Captain's Chance Discovery Launched a Determined Quest to Save the Oceans Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul's School Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Michi Challenges History: From Farm Girl to Costume Designer to Relentless Seeker of the Truth: The Life of Michi Weglyn Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera: An Insider's History of the Florida-Alabama Coast Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5People of the Great Basin: Native People, Native Lands Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Wars & Military For You
The Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror in America's Colony Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Book of Five Rings Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Watchmaker's Daughter: The True Story of World War II Heroine Corrie ten Boom Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power, and Deception on the Eve of World War I Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Last Kingdom Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Diary of Anne Frank Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Kill Anything That Moves Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Dirty Tricks Department: Stanley Lovell, the OSS, and the Masterminds of World War II Secret Warfare Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Korean War: A History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Countdown 1945: The Extraordinary Story of the Atomic Bomb and the 116 Days That Changed the World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Shortest History of Israel and Palestine: From Zionism to Intifadas and the Struggle for Peace Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Nazi Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Unbroken Bonds of Battle: A Modern Warriors Book of Heroism, Patriotism, and Friendship Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5J. Robert Oppenheimer: The Life and Legacy of the Father of the Atomic Bomb Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Palestine Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Rape of Nanking: The History and Legacy of the Notorious Massacre during the Second Sino-Japanese War Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5You're Stepping on My Cloak and Dagger Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Heart of Everything That Is: The Untold Story of Red Cloud, An American Legend Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Saved: A War Reporter's Mission to Make It Home Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Code Name: Lise: The True Story of the Woman Who Became WWII's Most Highly Decorated Spy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for The Three-Year Swim Club
0 ratings0 reviews