<Begin Segment 27>

AH: Did you develop close friends over there among teammates?

WY: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Some of these guys really took good care of me. You know, they come pick me up, take me to practice, take me to the stadium like that. So as far as making friends in Japan, I had no problem whatsoever. The guys were so nice to me.

AH: Did you date Japanese women?

WY: No.

AH: You didn't?

WY: No.

AH: So you just lived a sort of a celibate life?

WY: Yeah, so I... well, my first year I wasn't married. I was more just kind of engaged already. But then I came back, and my second year, I came back in February. I got married and went back there.

AH: So you had a family of sorts then right away, almost, didn't you?

WY: Yeah. But as far as I was concerned, I mean, Japanese girls are good, polite and all that, but I wasn't the type that wanted to marry a Japanese girl. I don't know. I mean, the way they do things, the way they think and all that, it's not my type. You know, I got to marry an American. [Laughs]

AH: How did you meet a Japanese American girl? How did you meet Jane, your wife?

WY: Oh, I met her here.

AH: Where?

WY: My friend introduced me to her. See, those days, when we used to go to, they had various social functions here, and they all used to, the girls and the boys used to go to maybe a gym, big auditorium. And then you would go and ask girls for dance and all that. So my friend told me, "Let's go," he wanted to introduce me to the girlfriend. So, I went, so they introduced, she, he introduced me to Jane.

AH: Was she a sports fan?

WY: Not too much. She's not that much of a sports fan. But now, today, somehow she, she's more interested in baseball than when I used to play. [Laughs] But she, I'm glad that I married her because she backed me up 100 percent. The way she, like when, when we first went to Japan, when we got married and went to Japan, in two days I had to leave for camp. And from Tokyo, we caught the train, took us twenty-six hours on the train to a place called Miyazaki, where the Giants train. And Jane was in Tokyo all by herself. For forty days, she was in Tokyo by herself. And those days... if today, okay because you get the good hotels and all that. When we first went there, we went there in '52, they didn't have that kind of hotels. They didn't have that kind of food. A lot of times, even like vegetables, you know, greens, salad, we couldn't eat those things because all the salad in those days, the greens were, they make it out of human... so naturally, you don't want to eat those things. But, so you try to do the best you can. Even like the first year, she was pregnant during the summer. We don't have any heat because we don't have that kind of money to buy a air conditioner. And so I would go out and buy a big block of ice and get a pan, put it right by the bed, and get this fan hitting the ice so it gets cool in our room. But in, after an hour the thing's all melt, nothing there. So even during the winter, it's so cold, and we didn't have any heat. So we used to, in Japan they have this, called, they called 'em kotatsu. They have a blanket there, and there was some kind of heat down there. And my wife and I, from morning to night, we'd be underneath there just staying like that because it was so cold, we couldn't stand the cold. You know, a guy from Hawaii and going to a place where February, March, it's so darn cold. But we went through all that, but now that I think about it, I'm so happy that I was patient enough to go through that, because Japanese baseball really changed me and my family's life completely.

AH: Who did you have for, in those early years of your marriage, who did you have for your circle of friends? Were they, tend to be through the ballplayers and their spouses? Or did it tend to be Americans who were over in Japan and things that you tended to...

WY: Well, during the early '50s like that, they had a lot of Niseis that were stationed in Japan. They were people that worked for the army. They weren't in the army, but they were civilians that worked for the army. And I had some good friends there. A guy by the name of Gordon Agena, who was from Maui, was my classmate at Lahainaluna. So he was there, and so he really took care of us, really nice to us, nice to my family. And then other Niseis that were stationed there, so we were very fortunate that we made some friends. See, when I was there in the early '50s, when I used to travel to all these small towns, cities, in Japan, and I don't know how these Niseis find out that I'm playing for the Tokyo Giants, especially my first year. But when I would go to, like, Sendai or some of these small towns like that, these Niseis would come and see me play. So then after, they said they want to take me to the camp. So I would go to the camp and I would have -- "What you want to eat?" I said, "Pie a la mode. Apple pie a la mode." [Laughs] Because they didn't have it in those days in Japan. But, oh, so things like that.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 2003 Japanese American National Museum. All Rights Reserved.