Interviews

1. Returning to Maui during baseball off-seasons to remind himself of the hard work required to succeed

2. His parents' experience with Japanese resistance toward intermarriage with Okinawans

3. Brought aggressive American style to Japanese baseball

4. The privations of living in post-war Japan, 1952

5. Training for football by carrying 100-lb bags of grass over mountains

6. Working in cane fields as teenager to supplement family income

7. Working in cane fields as teenager, and how it helped in his athletic training (Japanese)

(b.1925) Nisei of Okinawan descent. Had a 38-year career in Japan as a baseball player, coach, scout, and manager.

Returning to Maui during baseball off-seasons to remind himself of the hard work required to succeed

After the season's over I'd be winning the batting title. I come to Honolulu, I catch the next plane, I'll go to Maui and see the old house that I used to live, or the cane field when I was 12, 14 years old where I used to cut grass and all that. Just to go see that place because, see, I didn't want to forget those things because I saw how my father used to work before and that gave me something that when I go back to Japan I could try harder. [It] give me a good incentive to be a much better ball player. So, you know, sometimes ball players, they do well, they make good money. They forget about how they suffered when they were kids. But, all my life, even today, even I'm retired, but I never forgot that.

baseball identity

Date: December 16, 2003

Location: Hawai'i, US

Interviewer: Art Hansen, John Esaki

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum.

Interviewee Bio

Wally Kaname Yonamine was born on Maui in Hawaii in 1925. He first gained public acclaim as an athlete in 1944 after moving to Oahu and leading Farrington High School to its first Honolulu city football championship. After World War II, he was signed to a professional football contract as a running back for the San Francisco 49ers, the first player of Asian ancestry to attain this milestone. An injury prompted a switch from football to baseball.

While with the Pacific Coast League’s San Francisco Seals, its manager urged him to consider a professional baseball career in Japan. After joining the Yomiuri Giants in 1951 as the first American to play in postwar Japan, he hit over .300. Considered the greatest leadoff batter in Japanese baseball history, he won three batting championships and, in 1957, was named the Central League’s Most Valuable Player.

Upon retiring as a player, he finished his thirty-eight-year career in Japan as a successful coach, scout, and manager. Credited with introducing to Japanese baseball such American practices as hard sliding, running out bunts and infield grounders, and diving for fly balls, Yonamine was initially the target of fan abuse. He later achieved great popularity, however, and in 1990 was inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame. (December 16, 2003)