INTERNATIONAL SWIMMING HALL OF FAME
REMEMBERING THE KALILI BROTHERS— 90 YEARS AGO
As kids who preferred to dive for coins rather than race in a swimming pool, brothers Maiola and Manuella Kalili from Hawaii would eventually become national champions and Olympic silver medalists in 1932.
BY BRUCE WIGO | PHOTOS BY INTERNATIONAL SWIMMING HALL OF FAME
T
here’s a photograph that’s been on the wall in the International Swimming Hall of Fame museum for many years. It’s part of the Larry “Buster” Crabbe exhibit, and it shows him as part of the 1931 U.S. men’s national swimming team. Crabbe (fourth from the left, shown in the photo at the top of the page) and the coach, Bob Kiphuth (far left), are the only members of that team who have been inducted into the ISHOF. The team is standing on the side of a swimming pool wearing traditional Japanese swimwear known as fundoshi. Almost directly in the center of the line of swimmers (sixth from left) is a dark-skinned man with an outstanding Afro. Farther down the line (11th from left) is another dark-skinned man. They are Manuella and Maiola Kalili, brothers who grew up swimming in Hawaii alongside Buster Crabbe, and this is their story. Maiola and Manuella Kalili were born on the island of O‘ahu in 1909 and 1912. It was said that their father taught them to swim with the idea that they could become another Duke Kahanamoku, and like all of the native Hawaiian boys, water was their playground. But their early desire was not for competition—it was diving for coins thrown in the harbor of Honolulu by tourists on incoming and outgoing steamships. Their parents’ disappointment ended with the arrival of Harvey Chilton, the coach who started the Hui Makani Swim Club and started recruiting diving boys for his team.
TRIPLE THREAT In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the trio of Crabbe and the Kalili brothers dominated American swimming like no trio from the same club before or after. But at the 1930 AAU Nationals in Long Beach, Calif., it was a two-man show. Buster Crabbe and Maiola Kalili won four of the national championships, and they placed second in five races. In every event won by Crabbe, Kalili was second. Crabbe was runner-up in the race won by Kalili. In addition, Maiola was second in the backstroke, being barely outtouched by George Kojac, the 1928 Olympic champion and world record holder. But it was Maiola Kalili who was the talk of the meet: for “his style was the most relaxed and easy of any of the competitors, including Crabbe.” I haven’t been able to find out why Manuella didn’t compete in Long Beach, but the brothers had earlier been invited to compete in the Japanese nationals in Tokyo later that summer. Fatigue from the journey and exhaustion from competing in every event but the breaststroke, the brothers refreshed enough to win two events, bettering Japanese national records: Maiola in the 100 meter backstroke and Manuella in the 100 freestyle. The 1931 AAU Outdoor Nationals were held in Hawaii’s War Memorial Natatorium. In this meet, the Kalili brothers were swimming under the banner of the Hollywood AC, while Buster
>> PICTURED ABOVE The American team, dressed in fundoshi swimwear, lines up on the edge of the Meiji Shrine Pool in Tokyo for a dual meet with Japan in 1931.
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JUNE 2021
SWIMMINGWORLD.COM
