The man in the bronze

Duke Kahanamoku was born a mile from here in 1890, when Hawaiʻi was still a kingdom. He won three Olympic golds and two silvers as a swimmer, carried surfing from Hawaiʻi to the rest of the world, pulled eight men out of the surf off California in a single afternoon, and was sheriff of this city for thirteen consecutive terms.

He died in 1968. People still leave flowers.

Five things worth knowing

Duke was his name, not a title. His father was christened Duke Halapu Kahanamoku to mark the 1869 visit of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, to Hawaiʻi. The son inherited it.
He beat the world record by 4.6 seconds and was not believed. Honolulu Harbour, 11 August 1911, a hundred yards in 55.4. The mainland swimming authority refused to ratify the time, saying the officials had used alarm clocks.
He did not invent surfing. Heʻe nalu is Hawaiian and centuries older than him. What he did was carry it out to the world, and help bring it back at home. Australia dates its own surfing to an afternoon he spent at a Sydney beach in December 1914.
Newport Beach, 14 June 1925. A fishing boat capsized in heavy surf. He went out on his board and brought men back one at a time until he had brought in eight. Three other men on boards brought in four more. Five drowned.
He was never able to earn from any of it. Amateur rules barred him from being paid to swim, and the endorsement contracts that went to white Olympians of his era did not come to him. He worked as a city clerk and ran a service station between Olympic golds.

Why the statue is here, and why it faces the street

The bronze is nine feet tall, by the sculptor Jan Gordon Fisher, commissioned by the Waikīkī Improvement Association and dedicated on 24 August 1990, which would have been his hundredth birthday.

It stands with its back to the ocean. That was criticised at the time and it is still raised today, because a waterman turning his back on the water is the wrong way round. The usual explanation is that the statue was placed to face the people arriving along Kalākaua Avenue, arms open. Both things can be true at once, and it is worth knowing that the objection was made by surfers and by Hawaiians rather than invented later.

About the lei

People bring flowers here almost every day, and the impulse is a good one. But draping lei directly on the bronze damages it. The statue needed a conservation campaign in 2011 for exactly this reason.

If you have brought a lei, leave it at the base rather than over the shoulders or the arms. The large organised draping on his birthday each August is a different thing, run with the people who look after the statue.

Say it right

Kahanamoku: ka‑HA‑na‑MO‑ku. Every vowel is sounded. Four even beats, then the last.
Kūhiō: koo‑HEE‑oh. The line over the u means you hold it.
Waikīkī: wai‑kee‑KEE. Spouting waters. It was wetland before it was a beach.
Hawaiʻi: ha‑VAI‑ee. That mark before the last i is a consonant, not an apostrophe. It is a catch in the throat.