The 1999 holiday issue: Community ties through sports

Vol. 129, No. 23, December 1999. 120 pages. View this issue

Sports in Japanese American communities were the subject of this 120-page holiday issue, under the theme Community Ties Through Sports. Kerry Yo Nakagawa traced a century of Japanese American baseball, and Brian Niiya gave an overview of sport across generations. Bill Hosokawa wrote about Jimmie Sakamoto and the Courier Leagues, Sam Cacas interviewed Wat Misaka about his short stint with the New York Knicks, and Frank Emi described judo and his role as a Heart Mountain resister.

The martial arts get their own run of articles on kendo, sumo, karate and judo, including a look at the Powell Street Festival’s amateur sumo ring. Other pieces cover bowling and JACL’s tournaments, the Heart Mountain golf course, the Nisei Ski Club and plans for a gymnasium in Little Tokyo. Commentary columns add personal stories from players of all abilities. About 63 of its pages carry holiday greetings from JACL chapters, including San Diego, Berkeley and San Mateo.

What’s in this issue

In-Depth

• Community Ties Through Sports: Introducing the Holiday Issue, by Caroline Y. Aoyagi, page 4. The executexecutive editor introduces the 1999 Holiday Issue’s theme of ‘Community Ties Through Sports,’ describing the year’s stories on baseball, women in sports, martial arts, and camp-era sports. She thanks staff, volunteers, writers, and advertisers who made the 120-page issue possible, and notes the success of the P.C. weekly fundraising campaign.
• Diamonds in the Rough: A Century of Japanese American Baseball, by Kerry Yo Nakagawa, page 6. Nakagawa traces 100 years of Japanese American baseball history from Hawaii’s 1899 Excelsiors through Nisei ballplayers competing against major leaguers and Negro league stars, to the WWII camp teams and postwar major leaguers. The piece also recounts the opening of the traveling exhibit ‘Diamonds in the Rough’ at the Japan Hall of Fame and Museum in Tokyo, attended by pioneering Nisei ballplayers and U.S. Ambassador Thomas Foley.
• An Overview of Sport in the Japanese American Community, by Brian Niiya, page 22. Niiya, curator of the upcoming Japanese American National Museum exhibit ‘More Than a Game,’ provides a sweeping history of sport in JA communities from Issei-era sumo and baseball through camp-era athletics, postwar basketball and bowling leagues, and JA athletes who broke into mainstream American sports. He discusses how sports mirrored broader social issues facing the JA community across generations.
• The Los Angeles Nippons Baseball Club, 1926-1941, by Yoichi Nagata, page 30. Nagata chronicles the history of the L.A. Nippons baseball club, a semi-professional Nisei team that toured Japan in 1931 and played against touring Japanese teams including the Tokyo Giants in the 1935 ‘Japanese World Series.’ The team served as a unique bridge between the U.S. and Japan during a period of rising anti-Japanese sentiment until it disbanded after Pearl Harbor.
• Kendo and Sumo in the Continental United States, by Eiichiro Azuma, page 34. Azuma traces the history of kendo and sumo among Issei and Nisei from the early 1900s through organizations like the Hokubei Butokukai, describing how these arts shifted from elite Issei pursuits to community-wide Nisei activities meant to instill Japanese heritage and combat delinquency. The article covers wartime suppression of the martial arts and their differing postwar fates, with kendo reviving strongly while sumo largely disappeared from the mainland.
• Playing Hard Ball in Hawaii: The AJA Baseball League’s Racial Eligibility Controversy, by Jonathan Y. Okamura, page 58. Okamura examines the 1996 controversy when a non-Japanese former college player was denied entry into Hawaii’s Japanese-descent-only O’ahu AJA Senior Baseball League, sparking public debate over racial discrimination in the league’s eligibility rules. He situates the controversy within Hawaii’s history of JA political and social influence, arguing the league’s defensive stance contrasts with the more inclusive values JA leaders championed in Hawaii’s mid-20th century political transformation.
• Koheiu Yoshida: Judo Pioneer, by Martha Nakagawa, page 59. Nakagawa profiles Kohei Yoshida, believed to be the first judo instructor on the U.S. mainland, who taught in Washington and California starting around 1920 and received an honorary gold medal during the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. Yoshida continued advocating for judo’s acceptance as an amateur sport even after wartime incarceration disrupted his teaching, eventually earning the rank of sixth-degree black belt before his death in 1952.
• The Roots of Karate in Hawaii, by Charles C. Goodin, page 61. Goodin details the early history of karate in Hawaii beginning with the first Okinawan immigrants in 1900, describing visits by prominent Okinawan karate masters including Kentsu Yabu, Choki Motobu, and Chojun Miyagi who taught and demonstrated the art in Honolulu during the 1920s and 1930s. The article highlights early Nisei practitioners like Thomas Miyashiro and notes the significance of 1927 as the likely date of the first karate demonstration in the continental United States.
• Japanese Martial Arts in Hawaii: A Century of Budo, by Wayne Muromoto, page 64. Muromoto surveys the century-long history of Japanese martial arts in Hawaii including sumo, kendo, judo, karate, kyudo, and aikido, tracing their introduction through immigration waves and their wartime suppression and postwar revival. He expresses cautious optimism about the continuation of these traditions into the new millennium despite challenges in attracting and retaining younger practitioners.
• For the Love of the Game: Japanese Canadian Baseball, by Pat Adachi, page 74. Adachi traces the history of the Vancouver Asahi baseball team and the broader Japanese Canadian baseball community from the sport’s introduction during the Gold Rush era through the team’s role in breaking down racial barriers with Vancouver’s Caucasian community. She also describes how baseball provided solace and community cohesion during WWII internment and the postwar dispersal of Japanese Canadians eastward to cities like Toronto and Montreal.

Sports

• The Courier Leagues – Jimmie Sakamoto’s Legacy, by Bill Hosokawa, page 10. Hosokawa profiles Jimmie Sakamoto, a Seattle boxer blinded in the ring who founded the Japanese American Courier newspaper and organized the Courier Leagues, community athletic leagues for Nisei youth in baseball, basketball and football. The leagues fostered community cohesion and kept youths occupied until the paper and leagues ended with WWII evacuation.
• Asian Men Can Jump! Wat Misaka, the NBA’s First APA Player, Remembers, by Sam Cacas, page 11. Cacas interviews Wat Misaka, the first Asian Pacific American to play in the NBA, about his standout defensive career at the University of Utah and his brief 1947 stint with the New York Knicks. Misaka discusses experiencing racism growing up in Utah and reflects on being cut from the Knicks without explanation despite being a first-round pick.
• The Girlz Got Game!!, by Martha Nakagawa and Tracy Uba, page 14. This compiled feature highlights prominent Japanese American women athletes from the 1920s through the 1990s across sports including baseball, softball, swimming, bowling, golf, judo, tennis, and figure skating. Profiled athletes include Alice Hinaga Taketa, Evelyn Kawamoto Konno, Nancy Ito, Ann Kiyomura, Kristi Yamaguchi, and many others who broke barriers in their respective sports.
• Lords of the Ring: Amateur Sumo at the Powell Street Festival, by Raymond Nakamura, page 18. Nakamura recounts attending an amateur sumo wrestling tournament at Vancouver’s Powell Street Festival, describing the makeshift rings, diverse contestants ranging from teens to a man in his 70s, and the rules and rituals of the matches. The tournament culminated in a championship bout determining the Yokozuna, or grand champion, of the day.
• The History of Bowling, by Mike Hoshiko, WCJW, page 66. Hoshiko traces bowling’s history from ancient Egyptian and religious European origins through its development in America, highlighting the sport’s popularity among Japanese Americans both before and after WWII. He notes bowling’s unique appeal as a sport where spectators are also participants and its role in building cross-class and cross-ethnic community connections.
• The Big Game, by Pete Hironaka, page 71. Hironaka recounts a humorous personal memory of playing an amateur football game between rural and ‘city slicker’ Nisei teams in Salinas on December 7, 1941, only to return home and learn of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The piece juxtaposes the innocence of youthful sports rivalry with the historic events that would soon upend Japanese American life.

Community

• Shinzen Basketball: Bridging Communities Here and Across the Pacific, by Emily Moto Murase, page 39. Murase describes the Shinzen USA Nikkei Youth Goodwill Basketball Program, launched in 1997 by the Japanese Community and Cultural Center of Northern California, which sends Bay Area youth basketball players to Japan and hosts Japanese players in San Francisco. The program has fostered lasting friendships and cultural connections between Nikkei youth in the U.S. and their counterparts in Japan through homestays and shared basketball competition.
• Nisei Ski Club: Over Forty Years of Fun Through Skiing, by Pam Yoshida, page 45. Yoshida recounts the more than 40-year history of the Nisei Ski Club, founded from a JACL San Francisco chapter ski trip in the 1950s and later incorporated in 1968, which grew into a year-round social and recreational club with 350 members. The club has evolved from bus trips and prewar-style singalongs to modern ski trips, races, and social events while maintaining strong community bonds across generations.
• New Development in Little Tokyo: Sakura Village Gymnasium Project, by Christina Shigemura, page 49. Shigemura details the Little Tokyo Service Center’s plans for Sakura Village, a multi-use complex featuring a six-court gymnasium, housing, library expansion, and possible Japanese Consulate offices, aimed at serving thousands of JA basketball, volleyball, and martial arts league players in Southern California. The project has faced years of setbacks finding suitable land but recently secured funding commitments and is negotiating for a new site.

Commentary

• Wrestling With Our Place in Sports, by Gil Asakawa, page 40. Asakawa muses on the scarcity of Japanese American professional athletes despite Japan’s own enthusiasm for baseball, professional wrestling, and other sports, exploring the postwar history of puroresu (pro wrestling) in Japan as a form of cultural catharsis. He reflects on JA community support for sports through community centers and leagues, wondering if future generations of bigger, stronger JA athletes might finally break into major professional sports.
• Rounding Third: An Athlete’s Reckoning with Age and Injury, by Nancy Endo, page 41. Endo humorously chronicles her escalating sports injuries as she ages while playing women’s slo-pitch softball, describing her growing roster of specialists including orthopedic surgeons and neurologists. She reflects on the mentality of athletes who continue playing through pain and injury out of love for the game, drawing parallels to professional athletes who risk serious injury rather than retire.
• Learning the Art of Losing Gracefully in 10 Weeks, by Kristine Sakamoto, page 76. Sakamoto humorously describes a winless recreational volleyball season where her team, mismatched against much stronger opponents, learned to celebrate small victories like scoring even a single point. She reflects that the experience taught her the importance of playing for enjoyment rather than solely for winning, while still valuing good sportsmanship.
• A Japanese American Life Without Sports, by Jody Sakamoto, page 76. Sakamoto reflects on growing up in the Japanese American community without participating in youth sports leagues like basketball, which served as major social bonding experiences for many Sansei of her generation. She notes that despite missing this particular avenue of community connection, she found other ways to engage with the JA community.
• Staying Fit in Tokyo, by Lee Ryan Miller, page 84. Miller humorously recounts the cultural adjustments of joining a private gym and searching for a judo dojo after moving to Tokyo in 1996, describing confusing gym etiquette rules around shoes and the difficulty of navigating Tokyo’s non-sequential address system to find a dojo. He also touches on the practice of training with two Japanese high schoolers who were initially told not to fully throw him due to assumptions about American toughness.
• Indiana Jones Saved Me, by Glen Kitayama, page 85. Kitayama recounts how playing pickup basketball with his friend Brian, whom he initially found irritating, became a crucial stress outlet during graduate school at UCLA, helping him cope with personal and academic pressures including his mother’s death. Their competitive but friendly weekly games evolved into a lasting friendship, with both men later reflecting on how sports connected them across cultural and personal differences.
• Early Nisei Athletics: A Personal Reflection, by Shake Ushio, page 110. Ushio recalls the formation and activities of prewar Nisei junior and senior baseball teams in the Salt Lake City area during the Depression era, including the Murray Taiyo team and various Nisei baseball and basketball leagues that provided recreation and competition against town and semi-pro teams. The article also profiles standout Utah Nisei athletes including basketball star Wat Misaka and various football and track athletes from the region.

Incarceration & Redress

• The Heart Mountain Relocation Center’s Golf Course, by Janet T. Inouye and Lewis S. Kawahara, page 44. The authors describe how internees at Heart Mountain built and maintained a nine-hole golf course during WWII, led by their father Masao Mac Kawahara and Eddy Hamazawa, a former golf course worker. The Heart Mountain Golf Club held tournaments and issued membership cards to around 84 members by 1943, providing recreation and a sense of normalcy amid incarceration.

Military & Veterans

• Judo, Justice and Civil Rights: A Heart Mountain Resister’s Story, by Frank Emi, page 54. Emi recounts his imprisonment at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary as a leader of the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee, which resisted the WWII draft to protest the government’s violation of Japanese Americans’ constitutional rights during incarceration. He also describes his lifelong judo career, including a 1937 trip to Japan with a judo team and decades leading the Hollywood Judo Dojo, and considers whether his judo training influenced his willingness to stand up for civil rights.

JACL

• Bowling Tournaments: A National JACL Pastime, by Harry K. Honda, page 70. Honda chronicles the history of National JACL Bowling Tournaments beginning in 1948, detailing JACL’s crucial role in successfully campaigning against the American Bowling Congress’s racially discriminatory ‘whites only’ membership clause, which was finally dropped in 1950. The piece credits sports columnist Royal Brougham and various civil rights coalitions for pressuring the ABC to end its discriminatory policies, opening bowling to Japanese American and other minority bowlers nationwide.

Thank you for exploring the Pacific Citizen archive. The title, introduction and contents on this page were written by an AI model from scans of the printed issue, so they may contain mistakes. If you spot one, we would be grateful if you let us know.