The Three-year swim club

In 1937, a schoolteacher on the Island of Maui challenged a group of poverty-stricken kids to swim upstream against the current of their circumstance. Their goal was to become Olympians and the odds were seemingly insurmountable. They were Japanese-Americans, malnourished, barefoot, and had no pool but had to train in filthy irrigation ditches. Their future was the same as their parents'--working in the sugar cane fields and known by their numbered tags, not their names. In their first year the children outraced Olympic athletes twice their size, in their second year they were National and International champs, in their third year they would face their greatest obstacle--the dawning of World War II and the cancellation of the Games. On the battlefield they become the twentieth century's most celebrated heroes, and in 1948, they had one last chance for Olympic glory.