Читать книгу Empire in Waves. A Political History of Surfing онлайн

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There also appeared in rear-view projection a continual loop of fast-action motion pictures that contained surfing footage donated by Bruce Brown Films.⁵⁶ And photography of Hawaiian surfing was featured on the massive Man in Sport Transparency Wall created with the assistance of Sports Illustrated.⁵⁷ The American organizers were hoping to impart the growing significance of surfing across the United States, with boards representing the East Coast, the West Coast, and Hawai‘i. They did research on the mechanics and history of surfboard design and compiled a list of well-known shapers, ultimately commissioning the work of a select few.⁵⁸

And, it appears, the organizers succeeded in their diplomatic objectives. The reception to the American Pavilion was overwhelmingly favorable. The media, one U.S. official noted, was “almost embarrassingly lauditory [sic].” This was just as true of the sports exhibit as it was of the overall pavilion.⁵⁹ The sports materials, which included a good deal of baseball memorabilia—a sure hit in Japan—were, according to different press accounts, “authentic,” “outstanding,” and “excellent.”⁶⁰ One journalist applauded U.S. commissioner general Howard Chernoff’s confidence in sport’s popularity, noting that it was “paying off in press attention” to the surfboards and several other items.⁶¹ There were, nevertheless, occasionally discordant notes, most of them from visiting Americans. The wife of a naval aviator stationed in Atsugi lamented the presence of Leonard Freed’s photographs illustrating some of the complexities of American society, with its racial injustice and poverty; the images filled her with “complete disappointment, embarrassment, and anger.”⁶² A mother from a suburb of Cleveland—a self-described “irritated and disgusted member of your silent majority”—complained to President Nixon that “some Japanese families (not VIPs) with children strapped to their backs” were allowed through the pavilion’s VIP entrance while she and a group of American sailors were denied this privilege; if the sailors “had stayed home, burned their draft cards, grown their hair long, and blown up a college building, they would have been treated with more respect by the American government,” she fumed.⁶³ And an Air Force colonel who visited Expo ’70 while on leave complained, as did others, about the “ill kempt, long haired, dirty clothed, hippie[-]type singers” performing for those waiting to enter the pavilion.⁶⁴ As Chernoff reported to Washington, the Americans registering complaints were generally upset “because we wouldn’t let them jump the long lines, or because they felt we didn’t exhibit what they would have exhibited.” They ignored “the fact that ninety-six percent of our audience is Japanese and it’s to them, rather than the Americans, that we are aiming the exhibits,” he said.⁶⁵