Densho Digital Archive
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: George Yoshinaga Interview
Narrator: George Yoshinaga
Interviewer: Alisa Lynch
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Date: August 10, 2010
Densho ID: denshovh-ygeorge_5-01-0021

<Begin Segment 21>

AL: This is tape three of an oral history interview for Manzanar National Historic Site with George Yoshinaga on the 10th of August. And we were talking about you in Japan and your son needing to come back. What was your job in the early 1960s in Japan?

GY: I was working for a sports promotion company, sports and entertainment and the company was importing U.S. sports teams and entertainment. That was my main chore was to travel back and forth and make the contract with the different....

AL: Were you writing at all at that time?

GY: Yeah, I wrote for the Japan Times, but then as I said the person I was working for heard that I was... yeah, that's the Japanese mentality. If you work for somebody even if you work for free for somebody else they don't condone that.

AL: So you came back to the U.S. in the 1960s?

GY: Yeah, 1965 and I went back to the Kashu Mainichi.

AL: Okay. Oh yeah, could you tell us a little bit more about the football league that you were talking about?

GY: The football team? The Japan Bowl?

AL: The Japan Bowl.

GY: Yeah, well, there were the Japanese were watching or taping some of the American football games, and then the Japan Times said that they wanted to put on a game between two American teams, but no American colleges was interested in a team. So then the next talk was what about an all-star game. So they asked me to travel to the U.S. and go to the NCAA and see if it was possible to put on such a game. And at first they said no, we don't have all-star games in foreign countries. But finally after much discussion they agreed to do it and I didn't realize -- oops --

AL: That's okay.

GY: I didn't realize how much work that was involved getting an east team and a west team. And so I told them we have to open an office in Los Angeles so we can have a place to operate out of. Then I contacted five coaches and they thought it was a great idea so they helped me pick the teams, you know, the team from the east and team from the west.

AL: Where did they play in Japan?

GY: At the National Stadium that they had built for the Olympic Games.

AL: Good turnout?

GY: That's the amusing part, you know, the person at the sports, I mean, the Japan Times or Sports Nippon, I'm sorry said that well, don't be disappointed if the stands are not completely filled up. So I told the football players they're all all-stars, so they're used to playing before huge crowds you know. Said, "That's alright, we're here to have a good time." So day of the game we got on the bus from the hotel and we got to the stadium, there was a line, double line all the way around the stadium for people wanting to get in, and that's how football became a sport in Japan.

AL: And are they still doing that?

GY: No, after I quit in '77, I guess it was, they tried to continue it but they didn't realize how tough it was to contact the colleges and get the players but after I did it for four years the coaches all got to know me so when I write 'em a letter they would recommend okay use this guy, this guy and this guy.

AL: So when you came back to the U.S. in the mid-1960s, it would seem like from history that that's a very different place than you left a few years earlier.

GY: Oh, yeah.

AL: Like the civil rights movements, the civil unrest.

GY: Right.

AL: What was that like for you?

GY: Well, at that time I wasn't giving much thought to things like that.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright &copy; 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.