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)

Wally Kaname Yonamine

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

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

When I was a ninth grade, I went to Lahainaluna. Where I was staying, I couldn't get transportation because it's six miles to Lahaina, and there's no transportation for me to go to school. So, I asked the coach that I could be a boarder and stay at the dormitory at Lahainaluna. So, they told me that they have room for me. So, I stayed at Lahainaluna two years, the freshman and sophomore year.

And my job there was every morning, I have to go and pick a hundred pound of grass to feed the cows because they had a farm there where they raise cows and pigs and chicken, ducks and lot of vegetables and things. See, they had about 125 boarders there, so they had to feed them and things. And a lot of times, the milk and lot of the eggs and things, they sell it -- go downtown and they sell it. So, that was my job. I'd get up 5 o'clock in the morning, my freshman, sophomore year, and I would go pick 100 pound. Sometimes I had to climb two mountains and 100 pounds on my back coming in. But, that really helped me in football because that really strengthened my legs.

agriculture education

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)

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