Read an excerpt: From sugar cane plantation kids to swimming champions, Julie Checkoway&#x27;s &quot;The Three-Year Swim Club&quot; tells the true story of Soichi Sakamoto – a Japanese-American schoolteacher living on the island of Maui in Hawaii in 1937, who taught a group of kids living on a sugar plantation to swim using nearby irrigation ditches. He challenged the kids: work hard and in three years, some of you will represent the U.S. at the Olympics.