From Kenichi Zenimura, Japanese American Baseball Pioneer, by Bill Staples, Jr. (McFarland, 2011), Kindle Locations 37-53:
When Hall of Famer Frank Robinson was named the Cleveland Indians manager in 1975, he said that he wished Jackie Robinson was there with him to appreciate the significance of the moment. Jackie had died just three years before Frank became the first African American manager in MLB history.
In January 2009, I earned the distinction of becoming the first Asian American manager in MLB history when I was asked to lead the Seattle Mariners. [Ichiro joined the Mariners in 2001.] Unlike Frank Robinson, there was not one person who I wished could be with me to appreciate the moment – there were thousands.
I often talk about “those who came before me.” These people include my family, the thousands who were sent into internment camps during World War II, the men who served bravely in the 442nd, and the pioneers of the early Japanese American baseball leagues.
With the exception of my family, none of the others were with me physically when I joined the Mariners. They were with me in spirit though.
I am a fourth generation Japanese American, also known as a Yonsei. I was born in Hood River, Oregon, in 1963, and as a child I had no idea of what my family had endured during World War II. In actuality, they kept a lot of that from me. It wasn’t until college that I started to learn more about the past and that dark chapter of American history.
The implications of my heritage first struck me when a government check arrived in the mail in the late 1980s. It was my father’s share of reparations for the internment of Japanese Americans in the 1940s. My dad was born in the Tule Lake camp in California, just south of the Oregon border. I didn’t quite understand what the check was for. All I remember was my dad’s reaction: “it was all too little, too late.”‘
Over the years, my curiosity about my heritage has grown. From a friendship with baseball historian Kerry Yo Nakagawa I learned in great detail about Japanese Americans and baseball in the internment camps. I imagined the game I loved played behind coils of barbed wire and realized just how little I knew about my past.
Since then, I have discovered that the internment camp chapter is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Japanese American baseball history. There is so much more underneath. For example, few people know that
• in 1897 the first person of Japanese ancestry attempted to play in the majors;
• the first Japanese American baseball team was organized in 1903;
• a major league “color-line” drawn against Japanese players was publicly acknowledged in 1905;
• the first Japanese American baseball league was founded in 1910; and
• between 1922 and 1931, Nisei and Negro League teams did more to export the American game to Japan than their major league counterparts.All proof that there is still so much of the fascinating Japanese American baseball history that has yet to be told.
Far Outliers 