<Begin Segment 34>

AH: And so what did you do to continue your thirty-eight years in baseball after you got out as a manager?

WY: Well, so naturally, I started out as a player and then became a coach and then become a manager. After I managed, I became a coach again. But when I accepted the job as a manager with the Chunichi Dragons, I was so kind of leery that, see, the Dragons, when they hire you as a manager, that team, they fire you right away. If you can't do your job, they're going to fire you right away. So I was still young, I thought, and I needed a job. So, I went to see one of my friends, a Japanese friend, asked him, "What do you think?" I said, "If I get fired, I won't have a job, if I accept the job." So that guy gave me good advice. He said, "You take that job. Even if you get fired, you always, you always can go back as a coach again because you're a foreigner, you're American. Japanese, they have so much pride that they cannot go back and be a coach again. But you, you're American, you can go back as a coach." And that's what I did. I went back and became a coach again. And that's the reason why I was in it for thirty-eight straight years.

AH: And would Jane move along with you, because you were coach at different cities around Japan? So did you have to keep changing around your residence?

WY: No. When I was with the Dragons, that was in Osaka. Jane and the kids were always in Tokyo because my kids, they went to Sacred Hearts, one of the good schools. And if they would come to Nagoya, the schools were not that good, for Americans anyway. So we sacrificed. So she stayed in Tokyo so the kids could go to a good school at Sacred Hearts there. So I would stay in a hotel. But, maybe sometimes weekends, or sometimes during the summer, they would come to Nagoya and spend maybe a couple weeks with me at the hotel or something like that.

<End Segment 34> - Copyright © 2003 Japanese American National Museum. All Rights Reserved.