<Begin Segment 26>

AH: What was the Japanese league like? I read that the Japanese professional league didn't start until about 1936, so it wasn't a very old league. It was fifteen years old when you got there in 1951, when you were twenty-five years old, when you were starting to play there. What would you say -- 'cause you'd seen the best of baseball. What did you think of the caliber of the Japanese league, say, compared to the Class C league that you had just played in?

WY: Well, when I went to Japan, the Japanese, they weren't aggressive and I would say they hit a ground ball to the shortstop and they would just jog to first base. And I changed all that. So even when I was in Japan, I made a speech at a place there and the old-timers came up to me and said, "You changed Japanese baseball." Because when I went there, I did real American-style. Guys, double play, I'd break double plays. And I used to run out from the dugout all the way to center field and run back, and they never used to see that. The Japanese were so slow, you know? But I gave 'em aggressive baseball in Japan.

AH: Is it exaggerated when they write that the Japanese fans disliked you because you were Japanese American? And that you were sort of seen kind of as a traitor, in a sense, to the ancestry? And then that people threw garbage at you and cursed you and also even challenged you, came out on the field and challenged you to fights and things like that?

WY: Some of that is true. Like people used to come up, even had gangsters come up and want to kill me, or they throw rocks at me.

[Interruption]

AH: -- came out of the stands and challenged you and what was the cause for it. And you were saying that you think the cause was not so much that you were Japanese American, it was just that you were playing for a team that they didn't like.

WY: Yeah. Well, you know, could be some of the fans, maybe, I could be a Japanese American, too. But, more so, I was doing so well that the fans kind of hated me because I was a player of the Tokyo Giants. But I know they actually throw rocks at me and had a couple guys come down, they want to fight me and all that stuff.

AH: And then how did your teammates react to you?

WY: Well, they, they backed me up, yeah.

AH: Did you ever get into fights?

WY: Couple times. I mean, one time I knocked the catcher down and so both sides came out, but there were no punches thrown.

AH: What was the pitching like at that time, and at that level? I mean, since then we've had Hideo Nomos and things, that have been overpowering pitchers.

WY: But, you know, our days, maybe they might have one or two good pitchers. But those pitchers, every time they play the Tokyo Giants, these pitchers would pitch two or three games because the other pitchers could not beat us. And these guys were, I would say, better pitchers than Nomo. This guy Kaneda, he would throw maybe 97 miles an hour. Yeah. And you had this guy, Bessho, he threw, he can throw a forkball from here, here, anywhere. And he was fast, good control. You have a guy like Bessho, that was a good pitcher, too. But our days we had some good pitchers.

AH: You know, it's hard for me to read about the league because -- and get a sense of it because the teams are not tied to cities, they're tied to corporations and things. And where were most of the, there were two leagues -- there was Central League and then the Pacific League, right? And they each had six teams in the leagues. And then where were their home bases as far as the cities? I just can only imagine Osaka, probably, and Tokyo...

WY: They had, well, they had Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya, Osaka, and Fukuoka.

AH: And did you have good crowds for games at that time?

WY: Well, we used to draw 30, 40,000.

AH: Really?

WY: Yeah.

AH: Now, I was reading that your travel arrangements were way better when you were in Salt Lake than when you were in Japan.

WY: Oh, definitely. Oh, yeah.

AH: Can you describe the differences?

WY: Well, even in Salt Lake, it was a real, what you call a tough for me because when I was with the 49ers, everything was first-class. You know, you go to restaurant, you'd sign, if you wanted steak three meals a day, you'd have steak and you sign. And the hotels were first-class. Then when I went to Salt Lake, I saw the third-class. You know, one time I remember from Salt Lake, we went all the way to Montana, sixteen hours on the bus and the bus didn't have any heat. It was so cold going up to Montana. [Laughs] But I went through all that, and a lot of times like in Salt Lake, they used to give us only two dollars' meal money. Sometimes, lunchtime, you cannot eat because you don't have enough money and they used to pay us only $150 a month in those days.

And then when I went to Japan, it was all third-class. Lot of times, I used to sleep on the floor of the train and, because the seat is a wooden seat, you know, something like this. And you traveled maybe somewhere from fifteen to twenty-five hours on a train. They stop every station and the food is real bad, not good at all. And there were many a times that I couldn't eat the food they put on the table. But I'm not going to argue with them because my goal was, I had a two-year contract going to Japan, and I wanted the players to like me. And if I did well and... so I didn't care. The first year, even if I didn't do well as a ballplayer, I wanted the players to like me. So I did everything what the Japanese players did -- sleep on the floor of the train, the food on the table that I could eat. Sometimes even, I would sit close to the window, and I had some food I couldn't eat, I would throw 'em out the window because I don't want them to see that the food is still on the table.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2003 Japanese American National Museum. All Rights Reserved.