Aloha and Welcome to this chapter in the LEGENDARY SURFERS collection on Hot Curl surfer Russ Takaki. It is based on an afternoon in 1997 when Russ and I talked story. I have attempted to transliterate Russ's words and delivery in order to help preserve not only what he said, but how he said it.
Contents
After World War II
Makaha
Mainland Trip, Summer 1949
North Shore
Surfboards, Paddleboards, Canoes
Family & Friends
Influences
Russ Takaki began surfing big waves with the Hot Curl guys following the end of World War II and is widely regarded as the first Japanese American big-wave surfer. Alongside Wally Froiseth, John Kelly, Woody Brown, George Downing and Rabbit Kekai, he helped transform Hawaiian surfing from a Waikīkī beach pastime into the serious pursuit of large, powerful waves on Oʻahu's west and north shores.
Russ was not the first Japanese American surfer – or even Asian American surfer in The Islands. Back before the war, there was a Waikiki Beach Boy named Akamine. "A Japanese guy," Wally Froiseth told me, "one of the few Japanese guys at that time -- probably the only one who surfed... He used to spin the solid board around, you know; 3-60. No skeg, flat bottom. It was easy to do, but, we [young kids] couldn't do it."[1]
Then, there was Don Uchimura, on Maui. "I remember Don Uchimura was the first surfer here," in 1941, Woody Brown told me. "When I came over I met him and we went... out in those big Kahului harbor waves," before the harbor was dredged and the break lost its kick. Woody and Don were the first ones to surf Maui's Paukukalo, which got up to 10-12 feet at its biggest."[2] But this kind of range was under what Woody and Russ would ride later on in the 1940s at Makaha.
But, Russ was undeniably the first Japanese American big-wave surfer.
He was born on the Big Island of Hawai`i on June 24, 1919, into a Japanese immigrant family that worked the sugar cane fields. "I was actually born and raised in da sugar cane fields of Kohala, Hawai`i," Russ told me with a laugh that demonstrated his nisei pride.[3] Although he and his parents were full blooded Japanese, there was not much contact with their relatives in Japan. Spreading the family further out, when Russ turned 15, his family sent him to the Mid-Pacific Institute, on O`ahu, to go to school. After that, he went on to the University at Mānoa."[4]
His second year at school on O`ahu is when Russ got into surfing. He was 18 and living in the Ka-imu-ki area of Honolulu, between Kahala and Waikiki.
"I surfed some, before I went into the army," he told me of the period “just befo' da second world wahr”, "but not much, you know, [while] in school."[5] The boards ridden in those days were made out of California redwood. There was no rocker, no sophisticated plan shape, and the tails were wide.
"We called them redwood planks," Russ recalled. "Long. Must have been about 10-to-11 feet long and pretty heavy boa'd. Must have been about 24 inches wide; 70-80 pounds."[6]
After World War II
After World War II, when Russ returned from the army in 1946, he met up with Wally Froiseth and the rest just fell into place. "He lived in a house dat his mother owned in Waikiki," Russ explained. "I happened to rent an apa'tment, you know, nea'by. We used to shape our own boa'ds, after the wahr. Wally was the guy who was good in shaping."[7]
It didn't take Russ long to adapt to the Hot Curl designs formulated before war hit the Pacific Theatre. I asked him when he made the switch from the redwood plank to the Hot Curl.
"Right after the wahr, when Wally sta'ted shaping boa'ds. He already shaped Hot Curl boa'ds, you know." Russ paused. "It's amazing -- as I look back, now -- how those Hot Curl boa'ds could hold the wave of those big ones."[8]
The same year Russ had started to surf was the year the Hot Curl surfboard was born. It was in 1937 -- as Hot Curl surfer John Kelly recalled -- "Fran Heath and I were surfing at Brown's surf on a glassy day. We couldn't turn our redwood planks fast enough to get out of the peak onto the shoulder and be able to catch the tube. The waves were about fifteen feet and they'd just pound us. On every wave we'd catch, if you tried to turn your board a little bit, the back end would come out because there was no skeg, and you'd just 'slide ass' sideways. You'd then hang onto the board and get dragged sideways to the inside where you'd try to save it from the rocks and then paddle back out again."[9]
"Kelly brought the board in," fellow Hot Curl surfer Wally Froiseth told me. "He takes the axe, chops one side; chops the other side; tries it out. Worked perfect, man! The next day, he was smoothing it out, so, you know, it's nice. Then, I was so jazzed on it, I made one and Kelly made one. Kelly's and mine were second & third; basically both made at the same time."[10]
"These modifications were made in Kelly's workshop," Fran agreed. "Which was first I can't say. But they all hit the water at the same time."[11]
"We wanted to, you know, improve it, eh?" Wally continued. "And, as we were growing older, we wanted to surf on bigger and bigger waves -- you know, more challenging -- and experiment with all kinds of boards, shapes and everything."[12]
The effect of the V tail was similar to that of a skeg. Both eliminated a board's tendency to "slide tail" or "slide ass."[13] The 'V' tail acted as a keel to keep the board from sliding out of the pocket.[14]
Feeling very much "part of this small, younger group of surfers," Wally revealed, "we wanted to make changes -- just the way any new generation wants to make changes. We wanted more speed. We wanted to go across the face of the wave and stay clear of the break, instead of just dropping down and getting pushed in by white water."[15]
"After that first board was cut down," recalled Wally, "John and I got so jazzed because we were going behind guys -- it worked so good now. When you'd go in back of guys like Duke [Kahanamoku, The Father of Modern Surfing] and Tom Blake [the inventor of the hollow board and skeg], everybody became interested and the thing really caught on. You could do so much more, you could stay in that curl and run away from the wave if you wanted to. At Castle's when it was big, sometimes you'd catch it in the peak and the whole thing would come down in front of you. With our boards we could drop down and keep enough speed to go around the white water."[16]
"Wally," Kelly recalled of the naming of the board type, "shouted out 'Hey it gets you into the hot curl,' and the name stuck."[17]
"They were all mad at us," Wally told Nat Young, speaking of the surfers at the Outrigger Canoe Club, "because we were making waves. We were passing them. And we were like, well, the mob-across-the-track kind of guys."[18]
I asked Russ who he remembered most in those days surfing after the war. He was quick to note the arrival of Woody Brown on the scene at the beginning of the war. Woody added hydrodynamic modifications to the Hot Curl design to make them better. Also on the scene was a much younger George Downing, who was younger than any of them, but starting to come into his own.
"Woody Brown, Geo'ge Downing, some of those long-time beachboys like -- oh, they'ah all gone, now, though, you know -- like Turkey Love was one of 'em... Chick Daniels, of course, the Kahanamoku's..."[19]
But the guys who were really charging the big surf were the Hot Curl surfers who were the only ones with the equipment to keep them in the curl and keep them from sliding out of the critical sections. Woody Brown recognized that the main chargers at that time were Wally Froiseth, John Kelly and Fran Heath.
"They were the main ones," Woody told me, but also credited Russ who had started to hit the big ones, too, once he had a Hot Curl of his own. "Let's see, there was also Russ Takaki, a Japanese boy," is how Woody put it, "but those were the main guys who would go out when it was that big. No one else would even think about going out."[20]
Makaha
Although Duke Kahanamoku and others occasionally rode big surf at Waikiki in the 1910s and '20s, the first group of surfers to actively seek big waves wherever they might be was the Hot Curl crowd lead by Wally Froiseth, John Kelly, Fran Heath, Doug Forbes and a little later Russ Takaki, George Downing and Woody Brown.
"You see, in those days, you didn't have the numbers of surfers you have today," Fran told me. They were a small group, but the Hot Curlers who had been driven to improve their boards for riding big surf slowly began to look outside their realm of Honolulu for surf spots that would challenge them further -- unknown places. "The idea, then," Fran summed up, "was to get the biggest wave you could; to get in the curl; to get in the tube."[21]
They had first started surfing Makaha, on O`ahu's West Side around 1938, shortly after the first Hot Curl was cut.[22] After the war, they got into it in a big way.
"We started going to Makaha all the time," Fran said. "We'd try to bring other guys out with us, but one of three things would happen. If the surf was good, they might go out with us and have a helluva hard time out there. If it was really good, they'd usually end up sitting on the beach. Of course, if it was flat, they'd give us a hard time about our 'exaggerations.'"[23]
The youngest guy who neither sat on shore nor shined the whole Makaha deal was George Downing. He joined the crew in the early '40s and recalled the time as an era when "Wally, Fran, Kelly and I were into exploring the other sides of the Island. We surfed all the other shores looking for more size and power. The bigger the face we could find to ride on those boards, the greater (the unwetted surface and therefore) the freedom we had on them."[24]
For Russ Takaki, the years 1948-49 at Makaha were the most memorable ones. He would continue to surf the place until the early 1980s.[25]
Mainland Trip, Summer 1949
Switching the pattern that had developed over the previous 30 years or so of Mainland surfers coming to Hawai`i -- Wally, George Downing and Russ Takaki took an historic surf safari to the mainland in 1949, where, as Wally put it, "We made kind of a sensation with our boards."[26]
In a sort of surfer mutual exchange, on August 9, 1949,[27] the three Hot Curlers arrived upon the surf scene in California, more or less at the same time as Mainland haoles like Joe Quigg and Tommy Zahn were checking out O`ahu.[28] The Hawaiians arrived by sailboat, crewing from O`ahu to San Diego, then bought a Model A Ford and surf safaried between Windansea and Santa Cruz, California.[29]
"Wally, George Downing and myself," took the trip, explained Russ, "and there was two other guys and the skipper and a cook.
"We didn't sail back. I didn't have that long of a vacation. It took 15 days to sail out to San Diego and then we -- ah, um -- we had our sleeping bags and we bummed up and down the coast a couple of weeks, maybe more. Then, we had to fly back."[30]
Stopping at Malibu, the three renewed friendships with watermen Pete Peterson, Matt Kivlin, Dave Rochlen, Buzzy Trent and others. While there, the waves were unseasonably small and the water colder than usual. Pidgin parlance summed it up: "It no wave sho 'so no can go."[31] Russ, in his modest manner, not wanting to put the Coast waves down, merely described: "Fair surf at Windansea and a little bit at Malibu."[32]
"Just imagine," Russ shifted from waves to water. "When Wally, Geo'ge Downing and I sailed dat yacht to San Diego, we never had any wet suits. Nobody had wet suits. At that time. And, you know, with our redwood boards -- you know, they didn't float that high [off the surface of the water]. But, when you're young, you know, you don't mind that much. Never freezing, but we got to shivering.
"... the fellas would build a bonfire on the beach. Throw old discarded car tires [on the fire]. And they go to stink, but -- anything to keep warm!"[33]
Wally Froiseth has a number of classic photographs taken of this trip that can be seen in Nat Young's History of Surfing.[34] I asked Russ about some of the other surfers I saw in Wally's photos.
"We got off [the yacht] and got to know all the guys who surfed," Russ said about who the Hawaiians hung out with. "After all, we slept on the beach."
"You could do that in those days," I said.
"Yeah, those days nobody bothered [you]."[35]
"Several of the California surfers," Russ added, "would trace our boards on large sheets of paper and did a fair job of imitating our boards."[36]
Although the Hot Curl caused a good deal of excitement among Southern California surfers, the design did not work well in local waters primarily due to the added weight of the V tail section, less powerful waves than Hawaii that broke in mostly shorebreaks, and the fact that a skeg could achieve the same tracking stability.
Adding to Russ' recollections of the Mainland trip, Wally Froiseth mentioned they had gotten to see surfing's first photographer Doc Ball and that they stirred up a lot of interest among California surfers to go Hawaiian.
"Yeah, well, see, after we made this trip to the Coast," Wally told me, "guys started comin' down, little by little; send pictures back and go back with stories of their own. At one point, I got a letter from [Pete] Peterson. He writes me, telling me, 'Hey, Wallace, this guy here says you guys are out surfing Barber's Point in 60-foot waves -- that right?'"[37]
North Shore
Nobody was surfing anything near 60-foot waves back in those days. However, it is not a stretch to say on the biggest days at Makaha the point surf could reach 30 feet. It was waves this size that caused many of the Hot Curl guys to move on over to the North Shore more often, where big swells hit more frequently than at Makaha. Even so, Makaha remained their favorite spot.
With the Hot Curl "modifications proven out," Fran Heath told me, "we were then in a position to meet the challenge of the stronger, steeper, and most unforgiving North Shore waves."[38] I asked Russ if he was in that early migration from Makaha to the North Shore:
"Yeah," Russ responded like, of course, but that wasn't his focus. "Mostly Makaha. We used to like Makaha the best."
When did you guys head over to the North Shore?
"Well, off and on, in the '50s, we used to go North Shore, too. Ah -- Sunset, Haleiwa, Laniakea, but -- I didn't go that often to that side. Aroun' dat time I sta'ted my family, you know, with t'ree kids. [And then,] I didn't surf dat much [after that]."[39]
By the end of the early 1950s, the half-dozen Hot Curl guys riding big surf were joined by Mainland haoles like Joe Quigg, Tommy Zahn, Matt Kivlin, Melonhead, Dave Rochlen and Buzzy Trent.[40] Buzzy crewed back to Hawai`i on the sailboat that had brought the Hot Curlers to The Mainland in 1949.[41]
"Buzzy Trent," Russ said the name with a reverence I'd only heard in reference to the older Hot Curl guys. "Oh, yeah! We surfed a lot, togedah. He used to like Makaha, also."[42]
In 1953, Honolulu photographer Skip Tsuzuki took the famous Associated Press photo of Buzzy Trent, Woody Brown and George Downing riding a 15-foot wave at Makaha that went world wide. "That's the first big wave that was ever photographed that had world wide distribution," Woody reminded me. "After that, of course, people started getting gung ho over big waves. That's probably when they started going the North Shore. That stirred everybody up. They started going everywhere there was big waves."[43]
Surfboards, Paddleboards, Canoes
Through the 1950s and the waves of assaults on the North Shore by Coast haoles, the Hot Curl surfers continued to ride waves at Makaha and, occasionally, the North Shore. When they weren't surfing, the Hot Curl guys were doing other water sports of a competitive nature and logged time in the water doing those things that helped put food on the table.
"We used to dive for turtles off Waikiki way back when it was legal to hunt for turtles," Russ recalled. "I had a 4-man canoe and we used ta use dat, you know, to go out, anchor and go fishing. Lotsa times we went for turtles. Then we would go for squid, too, sometimes.
"Wally was very allergic to squid, until -- interestingly -- until he was about age 50. And he would breakout in rash even when he would spear it, you know. After age 50, all of a sudden, somehow, the allergy disappeared and now he can even eat squid. Amazing, eh? Unusual."[44]
"For a while, Wally made racing paddle boards," Russ continued. "We used to have races -- every Christmas. Even now, they still run it -- every Christmas day we had a surfboard paddling race from Moana Hotel out to a bouy maybe half-a-mile, three quarters of a mile out, then around the Diamond Head bouy and back to Moana Beach.
"I know Wally made [a] couple of real good racing surfboards. He was a champion paddler in his day, too, you know. I think that was mostly before the wahr. After the wahr, it was Geo'ge Downing, now, that was da [paddling] champ."[45]
I asked Russ what was the best board he'd ever had? The one he liked the most?
"Oh, I don't know. I kinda t'ink that it was around 11 feet long. It had a balsa strip down the middle, about 21 inches [wide] and redwood sides, you know. Wally shaped it. It was a Hot Curl board. I really liked that. I had it for years."[46]
I asked him when did he have that board?
"I t'ink, maybe, from around 1948, when Wally made it. That board was super light for that time. It was only 'bout 50 pounds. That's supah light fo' dat time. Most [Hot Curl] boa'ds were 80-90 pounds or 70 at least.
"I know it was right around 50 [pounds] because when we were ready to come home, after sailing the yacht to California, we were able to get three surfboa'ds as baggage and the limit was 54 pounds. Because mine was under 54 -- Wally's and Downing's [too]. Wally's was a little heavier [than mine] -- they allowed us to bring our boa'ds back as baggage."[47]
Family & Friends
In 1951, after he met and married his wife, Russ started shifting his focus from surfing to his own budding family.
"She kinda -- at that time -- hung around the beach," Russ said of his wife. "She was from Indiana. Passed away, now, quite a while ago."
I asked if, while he was bringing his family up, was he able to pass-on surfing to his kids?
"Yeah. All my three daughters surfed for a while."
How long after starting his family did he continue to surf with Wally?
"Oh, I think I laid off 5,6,7,8 years. Something like dat. And then went back surfing mostly Makaha with Wally and some of da udduh guys."
Russ Takaki spent much of his adult life working in Honolulu with juvenile delinquents and adult criminals -- "what we called 'Adult Parole,'" he told me. He had gotten into this field after the World War. By the time of our interview he had already been retired for 25 years, having ended his work in 1972.[48]
"Wally has had various jobs, you know," Russ continued talking about how they made their living when they weren't surfing, "but the last 25 years or so, he was with the Navy fire department, you know, for the island of O`ahu and when he retired, he was a fire chief. He's a very intelligent fella, you know.
"... he went out to Castle with that board [the all-koa Hot Curl we'd been talking about earlier in the interview]. You know, that weighs a hundred and -- what -- 75 pounds? Whatever. He's a guy full of ideas. Try anything. Good craftsman.
"He made his own koa racing canoe. That was finished about two years ago, now. He had a log from way back given to him by a friend in Kona and then about 2-2 1/2 years ago, he worked on it, worked on it and it's a beautiful t'ing. It's used for the racing, now."[49]
"We used ta go spearfishing quite a bit, at one time," Russ continued, talking about his friends Blue Makua, George Downing and Noah Kalama as well as Wally in the late 1960s, early 1970s. "We got chased in by a shark, once (laughs). Pretty scary.
"Just past Sandy Beach. It's all cleared up, now. When we used ta go fishing, there, there was lots of big kiawe trees. We'd park on the highway and walk through the kiawe trees and go spearfishing. One time -- there were four or five of us -- and that shark really chased us in. We had a line of fish and he just kept making passes at us. We were taking turns holding the line and the fish, you know. It [began when it] was my turn [to hold the fish line] and when one fella came up, he say: 'Who's got da line?'
"I say: 'I have. I'm coming.' I thought he had a fish.
"He said: 'No, no. Mano.' Mano means shark in Hawaiian.
"I said: 'Oh, wow!'
"Da shark kept making passes, one way, [then] the other way. Finally, I gave it [the line] to -- you heard'a Blue Makua? Well, he passed away, last year. Anyway, Blue tells me: 'You scared?'
"'Oh, yeah! Here, you hold the line.'
"He held it! And we worked our way in and, you know, it got to be OK. [But, it was] pretty scary."[50]
I asked Russ what other memorable moments he remembered best and he immediately mentioned the day President Kennedy was assassinated, November 22, 1963:
"John Kelly and I were driving toward the North Shore when -- ah -- President Kennedy was assassinated. It just happened that he and I were, you know, going surfing. It just happened that that very morning was when the President was assassinated." The two heard the news of it over radio and it had a weird effect on them.
"We just riding along and, oh, we just didn't feel like surfing," Russ said. "It was just such a tragedy. But, ah, we went out, as I recall. We went out [at Sunset Beach], anyway."[51]
I asked him about moments in surfing that really stood out?
"There was another time John Kelly and I had gone to Sunset. It was kind of a blown-out day. The wind was too strong. It was huge, huge, ext'a huge. Actually, nobody had gone out [that day] because da conditions weren't that good and the waves were too big.
"But, Kelly -- you know -- being the kind of guy [he was] -- he influenced me. 'Oh, let's go anyway and get at least one ride.' So, I went out wit' him. Oh, we got clobbered. We nevah got a single ride."
Russ paused, not wanting to make a big thing about it, but I knew it was a stark moment for him. "I really thought I was gonna drown," he admitted. "But, ah, fortunately, I made it to shore, you know. That was as close as I [ever] came to going under." Russ paused again, and then added as if to explain it: "Some people are crazy, Malcolm."[52]
A little later, I asked what was the average big surf he'd surf back when he was active?
"We used to call it aroun' 15 feet. But, you know, the way we judged the height of waves [then was] entirely different from da way the judgement is made, today. We used ta go by da face of the wave, looking at the wave, you know [from the beach], not from the back [from the ocean]. So, you know, when we say 15 feet, maybe people nowadays might call it 10, eh? Some'ting like dat."[53]
Influences
Toward the end of our time together, I asked Russ who had influenced him the most?
"I think Wally and Geo'ge Downing," he responded right away. "Downing is probably 10-12 years younger than I am. But, ah, by the time he was, you know, late teenager -- 18-20 -- he was one'a da best.
"Wally built me a board with a slot. You know, I would take the skeg off. When I was ready to go out, I'd put the skeg in with a thin sheet of paper, you know, to hold it in place. It worked well. That was, I guess, late '50s, early '60s, I think. Yeah."[54]
So, you were riding Hot Curls up until the late 1950s?
"By dat time -- late '50s -- didn't we have foam boa'ds? In fact, Wally made a mold and blew his own blanks; not that many, just for his friends and his own use."[55]
Who do you stay in contact with?
"Wally. I see Downing every once in a while. Most of the guys I don't really see. Peter Cole -- you heard'a him? ... Anyway, I run into him once in a great while... I don't know if he still surfs. If he does, he must go North Shore. Probably.
"I haven't seen Fred Van Dyke for a while..."[56]
Russ regularly took trips off the Islands, even at age 78. Over recent years, he's been to the West Coast, Canada and Japan. When I mentioned to him that my girlfriend was Japanese and had been excommunicated by her family for moving to the United States, Russ offered this candid opinion:
"You know, from my observation -- well, we've travelled to Japan 3, 4 times now, you know, on tour trips. But, as a group, Japanese people are very racially prejudiced. I can say that because, you know, I'm Japanese. But, I look at them differently from the way I look at myself. I'm, you know, born and raised here," he ended with a laugh.[57]
A particular favorite of his was Las Vegas, where he and members of his family vacationed "a couple of times a year," he told me with another laugh.
And, was the first Asian American big wave rider surfing in old age?
"Yeah," Russ responded without hesitation. "Mostly Waikiki, now. I don't want ta tackle da big stuff -- North Shore -- anymore. Too old for dat.
"I go out early in the morning; right at daybreak. Then, you know, there's only 4-5, half dozen of us. So, it's nice. I surf mebbee hour an a half. Dat's enough."[58]
Russ Takaki, Hot Curl surfer and first Asian American big wave rider passed on in 2011, at age 92.
ENDIT
Footnotes
[1] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Wally Froiseth, April 3, 1996.
[2] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Woody Brown, November 22, 1994.
[3] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Russ Takaki, March 16, 1997. Nisei is a Japanese term meaning second generation living in lands outside of Japan.
[4] Gault-Williams, 1997.
[5] Gault-Williams, 1997.
[6] Gault-Williams, 1997.
[7] Gault-Williams, 1997.
[8] Gault-Williams, 1997.
[9] Stecyk, "Hot Curl," The Surfer's Journal, Summer 1994, p. 66.
[10] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Wally Froiseth, April 3, 1996.
[11] Heath, Fran. Letter of June 10, 1996, with comments and corrections concerning the draft of the article I wrote about him.
[12] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Wally Froiseth, April 3, 1996.
[13] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Woody Brown, November 22, 1994.
[14] Finney, Ben R. and Houston, James D. Surfing, The Sport of Hawaiian Kings, ©1966, C.E. Tuttle Company, Rutland, Vermont, pp. 75-76. This work is based on Finney's Ph.D. thesis at the University of Hawaii. He was assisted in the writing by Houston.
[15] Warshaw, "20th-Century Radical, The Surfer's Journal, Spring 1995, p. 31. Wally Froiseth quoted.
[16] Stecyk, "Hot Curl," The Surfer's Journal, Summer 1994, pp. 66-67. Wally Froiseth quoted.
[17] Stecyk, "Hot Curl," The Surfer's Journal, Summer 1994, p. 67. John Kelly quoted.
[18] Young, Nat. The History of Surfing, ©1983, Palm Beach Press, Palm Beach, NSW, Australia, p. 56. Wally Froiseth.
[19] Gault-Williams, 1997.
[20] See Gault-Williams, "WOODY BROWN: Pilot, Surfer, Sailor," The Surfer's Journal, ©1996, Volume 5, Number 3, Fall 1996, pp. 94-107. Interview done on November 22, 1994. When I talked with Wally (April 3,1996), he showed me one of his big wave journals. According to his notes, no south swell surpassed May 1939's.
[21] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Fran Heath, April 2, 1996.
[22] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Wally Froiseth, April 3, 1996.
[23] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Fran Heath, April 2, 1996.
[24] Stecyk, "Hot Curl," ©1994, p. 69. George is quoted as saying he remembers this as the late 1930s, but according to Wally's recollections, George wasn't involved until around 1943, which matches his age better. Downing was born in 1930.
[25] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Russ Takaki, March 16, 1997.
[26] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Wally Froiseth, April 3, 1996.
[27] Stecyk, C.R. The Surfer's Journal, ©1992, Volume 1, Number 3, p. 54. Russ told me he remembers it as "around' 1949," but was very specific, when correcting my draft of the interview, that it was 1949, not 1948 as many sources place it.
[28] Stecyk and Pezman, "Rabbit Kekai -- Talking Story." Steve Pezman has this event in "the postwar late 1940s," in a special "Surfer Style" issue of Surfer magazine, 1983. As noted in Lueras, Leonard, Surfing, The Ultimate Pleasure, Workman Publishing, New York, NY, ©1984, p. 117. Lueras has Pezman as one of the early Californians to venture over. In the Surfer article, Pezman refers to himself the same way, writing, "They tasted Malibu as we had tasted Castles surf."
[29] Young, Nat. The History of Surfing, Palm Beach Press, Palm Beach, NSW, Australia, ©1983, p. 67. Lueras has Woody Brown in this group, but by Woody's own recollections to this author he didn't return to California after 1940 until 1993. See also Stecyk, C.R. The Surfer's Journal, Volume 1, Number 3, p. 54.
[30] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Russ Takaki, March 16, 1997.
[31] Stecyk, C.R. The Surfer's Journal, ©1992, Volume 1, Number 3, p. 54.
[32] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Russ Takaki, March 16, 1997.
[33] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Russ Takaki, March 16, 1997.
[34] See Young, 1983, pp. 66, 67 & 72.
[35] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Russ Takaki, March 16, 1997.
[36] Russ Takaki, in notating the draft of the March 16, 1997 interview, July 1997.
[37] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Wally Froiseth, April 3, 1996.
[38] Heath, Fran. Letter of June 10, 1996, with comments and corrections concerning the draft of my interview with him, April 2,1996.
[39] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Russ Takaki, March 16, 1997.
[40] Stecyk and Pezman, 1994, p. 68.
[41] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Russ Takaki, March 16, 1997.
[42] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Russ Takaki, March 16, 1997.
[43] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Woody Brown, November 22, 1994.
[44] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Russ Takaki, March 16, 1997.
[45] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Russ Takaki, March 16, 1997. Also specified in Russ' notations on the draft of the interview, July 1997.
[46] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Russ Takaki, March 16, 1997.
[47] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Russ Takaki, March 16, 1997.
[48] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Russ Takaki, March 16, 1997.
[49] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Russ Takaki, March 16, 1997.
[50] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Russ Takaki, March 16, 1997.
[51] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Russ Takaki, March 16, 1997.
[52] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Russ Takaki, March 16, 1997.
[53] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Russ Takaki, March 16, 1997.
[54] Gault-Williams, Malcolm. Interview with Russ Takaki, March 16, 1997.
[55] Gault-Williams, 1997.
[56] Gault-Williams, 1997.
[57] Gault-Williams, 1997.
[58] Gault-Williams, 1997.
No comments:
Post a Comment