At moonlit Waikiki beach last week, the flying fishes had tough competition. Inside Waikiki natatorium, the crack team of the Hawaii Swim Club took on the visiting national A.A.U. champions from Ohio State. In the process, the Hawaiians broke one Olympic and three U.S. records—all to the greater glory of a sad, serious-minded U.S.-born Japanese whose ambition is to get his boys on a U.S. Olympic swimming team, and to be their coach.
That ambition first hit Soichi Sakamoto a decade ago, when he was teaching grade school on the Hawaiian island of Maui. He knew nothing about swimming except what he...