I found several more photos from the celebration of Kamehameha Day on the beach at Waikiki in 1944. [The initial entry can be found here.]

This is another view of the photo published on Wednesday. Comparing with other photos, I identified the large man on the right as Gene “Tarzan” Smith, a colorful figure in Waikiki beachboy history, while Buddy Young is in the center.

You can read more about Gene Smith in this chapter of “Legendary Surfers” by Malcolm Gault-Williams.

“Of all the transplanted California surfers,” wrote Otto Patterson in his 1960 publication Surf-Riding, Its Thrills And Techniques, “‘Tarzan’ has accomplished the most fantastic feats of performance.” Patterson wrote this approximately 20 years after Tarzan’s paddleboard trailblazing! Under the chapter heading of “World Surfing Greats,” Patterson went on to relate that after Tarzan came to Waikiki in the middle ’30s, “he regularly paddled his board out of Waikiki Bay into Steamer Lane and disappeared from sight, just for the pleasure it gave him. During these years… he paddled to the island of Molokai in November 1938 and later to the island of Kauai, almost 100 miles away. Although others have paddled to Molokai, none have attempted to match his crossing to the island of Kauai.”

Eventually, Tarzan paddled to all the islands. In the Summer of 1945, he “paddled his surfboard across the forty mile channel between Hawaii and Maui… bringing to an end his epic voyage through the Hawaiian Island chain by surfboard.”

Gault-Williams collects a lot more of Smith’s story, or perhaps legend.