Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball (review)

Reviewed by: Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball Eric B. Salo Robert K. Fitts. Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008. 339 pp. Cloth, $26.95. Wally Yonamine’s fascinating story not only caters to baseball fans, but should appeal to a larger audience. Robert K. Fitts does an excellent job of capturing this story in Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball. The subtitle is no exaggeration: consider that before Yonamine and his aggressive style of play Japanese ballplayers walked, literally, to first base on a base on balls. They carefully avoided getting between the middle infielder and his throw to first on a double play. By comparison, Yonamine was a raucous American (he came from a complicated Hawaiian-Japanese-American background, but was nonetheless seen as fully American) who perpetuated Japan’s post–WWII image of a pugnacious America. The fury of a defeated country was focused on Yonamine. Japan’s desire for seclusion runs deep; to ward off Christianity’s influence, the Sakoku Edict of 1635 called for death not only for foreigners entering the country but for Japanese leaving their native land. The Japanese were willing to embrace baseball, but they only grudgingly let it be played by an American in the postwar Japanese leagues. Enter Wally Yonamine. While he did not endure as harsh a treatment as Jackie Robinson, the comparisons are there: both were skilled athletes with (relatively) cool tempers, chosen to represent a larger demographic because of their demeanor and ability to quietly withstand injustice. Both played football too; Yonamine was the first Japanese-American to play for an NFL franchise. Fitts explores this comparison, but Yonamine himself dismisses any similarities, saying, “Although I had it rough, Jackie Robinson had it much rougher. You see, my skin is yellow just like the Japanese” (116). Tensions were high in war-ravaged Tokyo. Americans occupied the conquered Axis power. The Tokyo we know today was then only a dream, deferred to a later time. Many of the ballplayers in the Japanese leagues were war veterans, who understandably found it easy to hate all Americans because they had seen their friends killed by American bullets. Yonamine bore the brunt of this anger as an American ballplayer. As a Nisei, meaning both his mother and father were of Japanese origin but their families had emigrated to the United States, specifically Hawaii, Yonamine was regarded with suspicion by the Japanese. The American had insults and bottles hurled at him in Hiroshima, and he may have been snubbed more than once for the league’s most valuable player award because he was a foreigner. He didn’t even speak the language. This is a compelling book for all the above reasons, but also because [End Page 189] Yonamine was such a successful ballplayer. He certainly was no major-league talent, but in Japan he was clearly one of the best players. The strong point of this book is how Fitts situates Yonamine’s story into the perspective of much larger issues. Fitts explains the history behind each rivalry, every racial slur, and every unique facet of the Japanese game. In many ways, Wally Yonamine is an anthropological and sociological work. Each insult is brought back to its origin and examined on a sociological level. Readers do not need to be knowledgeable about Japanese baseball, because Fitts’s meticulously researched and entertaining book does such a thorough job of explaining the Japanese game. Fitts’s expertise in Japanese baseball emerges throughout the narrative, as readers come to understand the evolution of baseball in Japan. Because the book covers such a broad time period—Yonamine stayed in Japan as a player, coach, and manager for thirty-seven years—it serves as a great primer on the general historical evolution of Japanese baseball, seen through the career of Wally Yonamine. This story of an American who became a Japanese hero is well worth reading. Copyright © 2010 University of Nebraska Press

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