by | 5 November 2025 · 12:22 pm

Piłsudski vs. Bolsheviks, 1920

From Kosciuszko, We Are Here!: American Pilots of the Kosciuszko Squadron in Defense of Poland, 1919-1921, by Janusz Cisek (McFarland, 2025), Kindle Loc. 2230ff.

Neither personnel nor materiel reinforcements arrived during the general battle waged near Warsaw, nor was there any aid for Lwów, which was facing its own battle of life and death. At the very beginning of August 1920, when the Bolsheviks occupied the Brest fortress, the road to Warsaw seemed to be wide open and defenseless. The fall of the Polish capital appeared to be inevitable. Foreign missions, with a few exceptions, began to evacuate from Warsaw, the world press began to write about the fall of Poland. On August 11 the Universal News Service reported from Washington that the Secretary of State recommended the U.S. legation move to Grudziądz. Other sources confirmed the information.

Piłsudski took full responsibility for the preparation of a counteroffensive. At first his plan depended on a concentration of forces under the cover of the fortress at Brest. When the fortress fell on August 1, his plan had to be completely rethought. The French advisor to the Polish General Staff, General Maxime Weygand, opted for a concentration of forces around Warsaw and a linear defense along the natural lines. Waygand envisiged only a limited counterattack. Rozwadowski, who from July 22 was the Chief of General Staff, proposed a counterattack with a force concentrated near Garwolin. None of these plans gained full recognition by the Commander in Chief. It was on August 6 that Piłsudski prepared the basic idea of his maneuver. It established a broad pincer movement from the south, striking the Bolsheviks’ left wing engaged near Warsaw and closing off their retreat path to the east. Piłsudski simultaneously issued an order dividing the armed forces into three fronts: the Northern, Central, and Southern. The 7th Squadron was assigned to the Southern Front in the area bordered by the line between Włodzimierz Wołyński, Hrubieszów, and Zamość, all the way to the Romanian border. At the same time, the Marshal recommended a concentration of troops in the vicinity of Puławy, under the cover of the Wieprz River, south of Warsaw. This was to be established from the 1st and the 3rd Infantry Division Legions, the 21st Mountain Division, the 14th Wielkopolska Infantry Division and other smaller units. These units had been delegated to carry out the main strike. The key to success was that designated units were to swiftly isolate themselves from the Southern Front, while at the same time effectively defending their right wing in order to prevent Bolshevik units operating in the Lwów area from taking part in battle. The next crucial element for the success of operation was to maintain the complete secrecy of the plan and to guarantee maximum surprise by attacking at the very moment of the full engagement of the enemy near Warsaw. Piłsudski personally led a counteroffensive in the morning hours of August 16 on the Wieprz River. His presence among the units, as Gen. Maxime Weygand wrote, transformed morale, which had been shaken after a retreat lasting a few weeks. The Bolsheviks were completely surprised; they did not expect the Polish armed forces to be ready for a greater offensive. Their defeat was more complete because the day before Piłsudski’s counterattack, the 5th Army under the command of Gen. Władysław Sikorski gained a local success in action north of Warsaw along the Vistula. On August 18 the Poles’ success was already evident. The Bolshevik Mozyr Group, which approached Warsaw from the southeast, was smashed, as was the 16th Army, which attacked Warsaw from Mińsk Mazowiecki and Radzymin.

By August 25 the Bolsheviks had lost 25,000 killed and wounded, with 66,000 taken prisoner and over 231 artillery pieces, 1,023 machine guns, and a huge amount of military equipment captured. The 3rd, 4th, 15th, and 16th Bolshevik Armies found themselves in a panic retreat. The battle was swiftly baptized as the 18th decisive battle in world history. It was already clear that Piłsudski had halted the Bolshevik advance into the heart of Europe.

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Filed under military, nationalism, Poland, Ukraine, USSR, war

by | 3 November 2025 · 7:02 am

Ubiquitous Street Signs in Poland

Zapraszamy lit. ‘We invite’ (= ‘Welcome’) is on nearly every storefront, but I haven’t seen it on welcome mats. One also sees Dziękujemy ‘we thank you’.

Among the most common prohibitive streetsigns are: Zakas Parkowanie ‘No parking’. Many streets have paid (Płatny) parking zones with one interactive Parkomat meter per zone. Blue signs with P mark the beginning, and often specify whether parking is parallel, angled, or perpendicular to the sidewalk. The ends of paid parking zones are marked with blue signs reading Koniec ‘end’.

Many shops and restaurants also display Zakas Palenia ‘no smoking’. Lots of Poles smoke or vape and you often encounter groups of people standing around outside taking smoke breaks (in the cold) before going back inside. It took me a while to figure out that the Papierosy advertised at many stores are ‘cigarettes’. What gave it away for me were signs advertising e-papierosy.

Lifts are labeled Winda (sg.) or Windy (pl.). Ground floors (parter) are numbered 0, and basements are numbered -1. Each upper floor is a piętro and the newly upgraded elevator in our building announces piętro zero at the ground floor and piętro minus jeden in the basement where the recycling bins are.

Our rather nice building also has signs that warn residents not to park their rowery ‘bicycles’, hulajnogi ‘scooters’, or deskorolki ‘skateboards’ in the hallways. Hulajnogi elektryczne are as much a danger to pedestrians on Polish sidewalks as they are everywhere else.

Poles have a reputation for being heavy drinkers, and all manner of liquor is readily available even on Sundays in the ubiquitous Żabka convenience shops, but we have been surprised to see so many varieties of very tasty beers and wines (and even hard liquor) on storeshelves and in restaurants that are labeled bezalkoholowe (0,0%).

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Filed under food, language, Poland, travel

by | 24 October 2025 · 8:57 am

Polish Signage: Days of the Week

So far, I’m encountering far more Polish in writing than in I am in speech, so I’m learning to read more words than to understand spoken words. I thought I should start a series of blogposts about some of the ubiquitous practical signage that is not much addressed either in my Duolingo lessons or in my grammar books. I’ll start with the way days of the week appear on many commercial doorways.

The long word for Monday is one more reason to hate Mondays: poniedziałek. The rest of the workday names are much shorter: wtorek, środa, czwartek, piątek. All except ‘Wednesday’ end in the diminutive -ek, which helps distinguish two of them from the ordinals czwarty ‘fourth’ and piąty ‘fifth’. Wtorek is related to the older Slavic ordinal for ‘second’, but Polish now uses drugi for ‘second’.

The word for ‘Wednesday’ basically means ‘middle’ (as in German Mittwoch, literally ‘midweek’), and it occurs in compounds such as śródmieście ‘midtown, downtown’.

Sobota ‘Saturday’ comes ultimately from Hebrew via Greek and Latin for Sabbath. But niedziela ‘Sunday’ comes from a Proto-Slavic compound that meant ‘no work’. (English weekend has now also been borrowed into Polish.)

So poniedziałek ‘Monday’ can be parsed into a compound typical of many Slavic languages, with po ‘after’ and a diminutive form niedziałek from niedziela ‘Sunday’, thus ‘the day after no work’. Alternations between l and ł in different forms of the same word are not at all rare in Polish.

Stores that list their hours open for business will often abbreviate Mon–Fri as Pon–Pt, or Mon–Thu as Pon–Czw, if they open longer hours on Fri–Sat. A university calendar abbreviates the weekdays thus: Pn. Wt. Śr. Cz. Pt.

In other contexts, niedziela ‘Sunday’ is often abbreviated Nd. or Ndz., tacitly recognizing its two-morpheme source. Most businesses offer no service hours on Sunday: nieczynne.

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by | 23 October 2025 · 4:53 pm

Goodwill Tours of Japan, 1927

From Kenichi Zenimura, Japanese American Baseball Pioneer, by Bill Staples, Jr. (McFarland, 2011), Kindle Locations 904-910:

In January, the FAC [Fresno Athletic Club] announced its arrangements to make a second tour of Asia in March with 40 games in Japan scheduled and plans to take the team to China and Korea with a stop in Honolulu on the way home. There were a number of new players on the team. Not included in the initial news wire was the fact that the FAC were visiting Japan at the invitation of Meiji University, or more specifically, Zenimura’s cousin, friend and colleague, Takizo Matsumoto, the man formerly known as Frank Narushima, one of the cofounders founders of the FAC. In February, the Japanese American newspaper Rafu Shimpo announced similar news about Lon Goodwin and his Philadelphia Royal Giants.

According to historian Kazuo Sayama, the Philadelphia Royal Giants traveled to Japan on its own budget and “on recommendation by a certain Japanese American entrepreneur in California.” Although he is never mentioned by name, historians believe that the entrepreneurial Californian is Zenimura based on his previous interactions with Goodwin and their teams throughout the 1925-26 seasons.

Much more about the goodwill tours online here.

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Filed under baseball, Japan, migration, U.S.

by | 23 October 2025 · 3:02 am

California Japanese Baseball League, 1926

From Kenichi Zenimura, Japanese American Baseball Pioneer, by Bill Staples, Jr. (McFarland, 2011), Kindle Locations 846-853:

On March 5, the Associated Press announced that “a Japanese baseball league for California, the first of its kind to permanently organize, has been formed for a schedule of Sunday day afternoon games. Fresno, Stockton, Alameda and Sacramento are represented on the circuit. The players are all Japanese, and the games will be played in private parks owned by the Japanese baseball associations in the respective cities on the circuit. The Stockton team has incurred considerable expense in importing a number of players from the Hawaiian islands, while Fresno has gathered in star athletes from various parts of the United States. The schedule starts next Sunday and closes November 3, with an intermission during the summer months.”

In the first game of the season for the California Japanese Baseball League (CJBL), the Fresno Athletic Club blanked the Yamato Club of Stockton, 4 to 0, at the Japanese Ballpark in Fresno. Nitta held the Stockton lineup to two hits, while Nushida and Munishi were touched for 11 hits by the Fresno crew. The big sticks for the Japanese were carried by Nakagawa, who drove in two runs – base runners Zenimura and Sukita – with a long single in the fifth. Yoshikawa, Kunitomo, and Iwata all got wood on the ball to drive in the other two runs.

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Filed under baseball, Japan, migration, U.S.

by | 21 October 2025 · 6:57 pm

Japan vs. U.S. Baseball, 1924

From Kenichi Zenimura, Japanese American Baseball Pioneer, by Bill Staples, Jr. (McFarland, 2011), Kindle Locations 695-708:

Captain Zenimura and his boys lost two of the three games against the Salt Lake Bees in the spring of 1924, but ultimately they – and to some degree, Japanese American baseball itself – won the respect of their Caucasian peers in the Pacific Coast League. After the series with Salt Lake, the FAC looked forward to some heated contests against Japanese American ball clubs. In April they welcomed the Stockton Yamato to the Firemen and Policemen’s ballpark and defeated them, 5 to 4. The Fresno Bee also announced that Zenimura’s club “will play a two game series with the Meiji University team here on May 10th and 11th, after which they will plan an invasion of the Orient.”

The Meiji University team – the college champions of Japan – planned to tour the East and Midwest, in addition to its games against West Coast clubs including Zenimura’s, and then return home on June 29. As it turned out, the San Jose Asahi would be the only Japanese American team to defeat the 1924 Meiji ballclub on its tour in the U.S.” Ironically, while the Meiji University ballclub was in the United States touring, President Calvin Coolidge signed into law the Immigration Act of 1924 which effectively ended all Japanese immigration to the U.S. During the months of June and July, Zenimura was busy making plans for the upcoming tour to Japan. Once all the details were addressed and players secured, Zeni distributed the following information on the Associated Press night wire:

FRESNO, July 17. – The Fresno Athletic Club will sail from San Francisco September 2 on board the President Pierce for a tour of the Hawaiian Islands and Japan, it was announced today. The regular team will be reinforced by Pitcher Miyahara of Centre College, Kentucky; Outfielder Tsuda of Whitman College, Washington, Pitcher Nushida of Stockton and a couple of Fresno players yet to be selected. The Fresno Athletic Club claims the Japanese baseball championship of America.

In preparation for the tour, Zenimura had the club increase workouts from three to four times a week. In addition, he scheduled a best-of-three-game series against the tough Fresno Tigers, an independent team led by new manager Art Ramage. The Tigers’ new skipper competed at Santa Clara College and enjoyed brief stints in professional baseball with the New York Americans (1916) and Sacramento Senators (1918).

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by | 20 October 2025 · 8:31 pm

California Baseball in 1921

From Kenichi Zenimura, Japanese American Baseball Pioneer, by Bill Staples, Jr. (McFarland, 2011), Kindle Locations 487-499:

According to historian William F. McNeil, the California Winter League (CWL) experienced an increase in talent during the 1920-21 season. McNeil called it a “breakthrough” year with competition playing at the AA and AAA level. The CWL rise in talent was attributed to the participation of Negro Leagues caliber players with the L.A. White Sox, Lincoln Giants and Alexander Giants. They played all of their games at the newly constructed Anderson Park (aka White Sox Park), named after local black businessman Doc Anderson, and their rosters boasted future Hall of Famers Andy Cooper and Biz Mackey, and a host of local black athletes, including University of Southern California star running back Johnny Riddle. Zenimura and his FAC team would get their chance four years later to test their mettle against these great ballplayers.

In February 1921 in New York, a group of Japanese representatives from Waseda, Tokyo, Yokohama and Kobe universities announced that they were eager to take “an all-star baseball team made up of members of the Race,” also known as Negro League players, to Japan. Spokesmen for the delegation told reporters that they were eager to see a first-class team of Negro Leaguers play Waseda University, with the goal of helping to foster interest in the pastime in Japan.

Waseda University would have to wait another six years to play a first-class team of Negro League players in Japan. Yet, they only needed to wait three weeks to compete against a first-class team of Japanese American players in Hawaii. On May 9, 1921, the college boys from Waseda battled the Hawaiian Asahi, featuring many of Zeni’s former Island teammates and future FAC [= Fresno Athletic Club] teammates. The visiting ballclub was walloped by the Asahis to the tune of 8 to 2.

But U.S.-Japanese baseball relations flourished in the later part of 1921. The Los Angeles Times reported that nine clubs from the Pacific Coast and Hawaii had either made the trip or were making plans to tour Japan. The list of teams invading Japan included a PCL [= Pacific Coast League] all-star star team led by Seattle baseball man Frank Miya; semipro players from Canada and Hawaii; the Seattle Asahi, the top Nisei team of the West Coast; college teams, including the University of California and University of Washington; and the Sherman Indian School of Southern California.

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Filed under baseball, education, Japan, migration, U.S.

by | 20 October 2025 · 7:32 am

Early Baseball in Hawaii

From Kenichi Zenimura, Japanese American Baseball Pioneer, by Bill Staples, Jr. (McFarland, 2011), Kindle Locations 266-283, 338-343:

When young Zeni arrived in Honolulu in 1907, … baseball was already the most popular sport in the islands. For that matter, the game was played in Hawaii long before it was introduced to Japan or to most of the continental U.S. In 1849, Alexander Cartwright – the man recognized as the father of the modern game – moved to Honolulu after a failed attempt at life in California. Upon arrival he quickly became one of the Hawaii’s leading citizens by founding the first fire department, library, and baseball field. In 1852, he organized several teams and began to teach the game across the islands. In the mid-1880s, Japanese plantation laborers played baseball to escape the tedious work of the sugarcane fields. As the rivalries between the plantation camp and company teams grew, so did the competition….

The first Japanese American baseball team – the Excelsior – was founded in Hawaii in 1899 by the Rev. Takie Okumura. “I formed a baseball team, made up mostly of boys in my home,” Okumura said. “Being the only team among the Japanese, its competitors were Hawaiian, Portuguese and Chinese.” The Excelsiors were a successful baseball club and considered one of the pioneering Japanese baseball teams in Hawaii.’

Another early all-Japanese team in Hawaii was the Asahi (“Rising Sun”) club, organized by Gikaku “Steere” Noda. The Asahi started off as a group of teenagers honing their skills on the sandlots of Iwilei in 1905. Within a few years they were playing in multi-ethnic leagues competing against the All-Chinese, the Braves (all Portuguese) and the Wanderers (all Caucasians). The diversity of the leagues inspired Noda to say “that through the world of sports, we can promote goodwill and fellowship.” Zeni joined the Hawaiian Asahi ballclub club in 1915, and it appears that he gleaned Noda’s wisdom and applied it throughout his career on goodwill tours.

…

In January 1915, Honolulu witnessed the development of a formal league comprised of four and sometimes six teams, including a native team, a Japanese team, an American team, and an army team. Over time the league developed senior and junior leagues based on skill level. After touring Japan in 1915, the Hawaiian Asahi competed in the junior league in 1916. That same year, Zenimura joined the Asahi.

Between 1916 and 1919, Kenichi dedicated his playing time to two baseball teams, the semipro Hawaiian Asahi and the Mills High School ball club. Mills, which later changed its name to the Mid-Pacific Institute, was a perennial baseball powerhouse in the late 1910s. In his 1943 Gila River Courier interview, Zeni proudly shared that his Mills High school nine “played the Hilo All-Stars for Hawaii’s Inter-Island Championship after defeating prep and semi-pro clubs.”

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Filed under baseball, Hawai'i, Japan, migration

by | 18 October 2025 · 8:30 am

Mariners Manager Don Wakamatsu

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.

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Filed under baseball, Japan, language, migration, nationalism, U.S.

by | 18 October 2025 · 1:14 am

Polish Attack on Kiev, 1920

From Kosciuszko, We Are Here!: American Pilots of the Kosciuszko Squadron in Defense of Poland, 1919-1921, by Janusz Cisek (McFarland, 2025), Kindle Loc. 1530ff.

The main burden of the Polish offensive was to be born by the land forces. In January and February 1920 two new classes of recruits were admitted to the Polish armed forces, which supplemented the rank and file to such an extent that in the spring of that year the Ukrainian part of the eastern front was reinforced by 55,000 men. On March 8, 1920, the High Command divided the whole eastern front between four armies. The 6th Polish Army was stationed at Podole and the 2nd Army at Wolynia. The 3rd Army, which was to mount the main attack on Kiev, found itself in the middle of reorganization. The choice of direction and the time of attack were determined by forthcoming signals about the concentration of the Red Army to the north of Błota Poleskie (Pripet Marshes). In order to prevent communications between the Bolshevik north and south theaters of operation, Piłsudski recommended taking control of an important rail junction. The Polish attack of March 5, 1920, led to the occupation of two key strategic points at Mozyrz and Kalenkowicze, which cut the Red Army into two separate groups unable to cooperate with each other. The main attack of the forces, consisting of eight infantry divisions, five cavalry brigades and an operational armed group of Ukrainians, took placed on April 25, 1920, in the direction of Kiev. The first objective of the operation was the control of Koziatyń, a vital center, which became the meeting point of the 14th and 12th Red Armies. Koziatyń had already been occupied by a Polish cavalry group on April 27. A day earlier, the important center of Żytomierz had been taken. In the space of a dozen or so hours the Bolshevik 12th Army was smashed to such an extent that they did not manage to regain their fighting ability before the end of the war. On April 29, Poles took Winnica, and thus opened up the road to Kiev. An Operational Group under the command of Gen. ŚŚmigły-Rydz attacked Kiev. It was their task to occupy the city, make safe the crossing and open the bridgehead on the eastern bank of the Dniepr River. The action in this direction moved so quickly that the American Military Attache expected the city to be entered by the first days of May. Significantly, it happened on May 7. Leaving the destruction of the 12th Army and the significant weakening of the Bolshevik 14th Army aside, a lot of war material and transport equipment fell into the hands of the Poles. Apart from that, the Ukrainians gained time to achieve their plan of establishing an independent state. Unfortunately, it was not successful. As a result of the break in the frontline at Samhorodek by Budenny’s cavalry on June 5, 1920, the front started to shift to the west. Budenny not only buried the hope of an independent Ukraine, but seriously threatened the independence of Poland herself.

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Filed under military, Poland, Ukraine, USSR, war