Wally Yonamine was a Hawaiian of Japanese descent who played in Japan’s professional baseball league from 1951 to 1962. For 27 years afterwards he served as a coach and general manager for several Japanese teams before becoming the only American so far inducted to Japan’s Baseball Hall of Fame in 1994. He is sometimes compared to Jackie Robinson, the first player to break the racial-ethnic barrier in Japan’s post-war pro-league. In fact a number of foreign players were part of the prewar game, but following Japan’s defeat and occupation few foreigners wanted to live or play in Japan, and the Japanese were not yet ready to live and work so closely with foreigners, most especially Americans. Yonamine made this possible by meeting his hosts halfway - he looked Japanese and had a Japanese name.
When he arrived in Japan, food scarcity was still a reality, housing was often ramshackle, sewage was basic, and transport was slow and uncomfortable. Perhaps the most interesting part of this biography are the chapters dealing with Yonamine’s move to Japan and the problems he and his family encountered in adjusting to life both on and off the field. Also of interest, and perhaps worthy of book-length treatment or a film, is the Yomiuri Giants’ 1954-55 world tour of Australia, Philippines, and Latin America, a tremendous comedy of cultural errors.
Besides just being himself in a place where wasn’t always welcome, Yonamine’s influence is thought to be much wider and far-reaching (hence the book’s subtitle). He is considered an innovator in playing style, something of a Hawaiian Pete Rose, who ran out infield hits, slid hard to break up double plays or knock a ball from a fielder’s glove, and played his outfield position short, resulting in numerous diving catches. His hustle was reputedly something of a shock to players and fans of the day, before this style of play became popular and emulated. During his coaching and managing career, he was known for establishing successful teaching programs as well as introducing a rotation system for his pitchers, something previously unpracticed in Japan.
Fitts supports the latter assertions with statistics such as improved team batting averages following the the introduction of a new hitting instruction program. Yonamine’s game-changing accomplishments as a player are less well supported. One might expect to see, for example, a decline in double plays as a result of his hard-sliding style, but no such stats are offered.What’s also missing from this story is context, starting with Fitts’ sources. He quotes extensively from his own interviews with Yonamine and his contemporaries, but very little from Japanese-language baseball sources of the period (or since). Basically, we get the Western, English-language version of Japanese baseball history, but we hear little directly from the Japanese press, analysts or public on Yonamine and his contributions.
Also lacking is any idea of why all this happened when it did. Yonamine’s parents were from Okinawa, a colonial outpost in Japan’s early empire, one that has never been entirely assimilated and continues to be the poorest, least developed part of the country. What forces pushed or pulled Yonamine’s parents to leave one colonial master for another, for a life of hard labor cutting sugar cane in Hawaii, then sent their son back to Japan as labor in the sport’s entertainment industry? Yonamine was courted by more than one Japanese team. Why were these corporations looking overseas for talent? Yonamine’s public reception suggests it wasn’t the fans clamoring for foreign ball players. Fitts observes the American occupation authorities were interested in baseball as a means to promote public morale, another way of saying the military was using sport to distract the Japanese public from the more serious problems of their day-to-day lives, and perhaps to keep young men from taking part in political activities. Was the Yomiuri corporation’s effort to secure Yonamine, and their presentation of him to the occupation authorities as a tool in developing US-Japan diplomacy, a means for securing favors for the Yomiuri corporation? Did the Manichi, which also courted Yonamine, operate under similar assumptions? A Japanese film from this period, Masaki Kobayashi’s I Will Buy You (1956), suggests the business of baseball was not about boosting anyone’s morale.
Fitts’ writing is workmanlike and as a result this a readable though not terribly exciting or engaging book. It was, it seems, his first book-length project, so there is hope his more recent work, on Japan’s first pro export, Masanori Murakami, may be more captivating.
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For further reading and viewing:
Doug Glanville on Wally Yonamine:
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/02/remembering-wally-yonamine/471210
Backstory on the biography:
http://www.japanculture-nyc.com/2012/10/22/interview-with-banzai-babe-ruth-author-robert-fitts/
Chris Jaffe on The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball:
http://www.hardballtimes.com/book-review-wally-yonamine-the-man-who-changed-japanese-baseball/
Wally Yonamine bios at YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nSGchG46lI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lp5j1upTWw
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