This is the latest installment of my series on the remarkable Tashiro family. In my next columns, I will discuss the children of the eminent biochemist Shiro Tashiro, who themselves became physicians.

As mentioned previously, in 1915 Dr. Shiro Tashiro travelled to Hawaii to do research. While in Honolulu, he became acquainted with a local hotel owner named Kawasaki, who arranged for the young doctor to marry his teenage Nisei daughter Shizuka Kawasaki. According to Shizuka’s granddaughter Cathy Tashiro, her grandmother related that she had not even been allowed to be in the room when her future husband had visited to make the arrangements, but had peeked out at him from behind a screen. The two married and travelled together to Chicago.

Kiyoshi (aka Kiyo or Kiki), the eldest of their three children, was born in Chicago in November 8, 1916. Soon after, the family moved to Cincinnati. At age seven, he began playing football in the Cincinnati Midget Football League. Kiyoshi attended Hughes High School, where he was was an all-around athlete. Not only was he a halfback on the school football team, but he showed talent in wrestling, track, and judo.

In fall 1934 Kiyoshi Tashiro enrolled at Harvard University as an anthropology student. There he attracted national newspaper coverage by making Harvard’s freshman football squad as a running back. (Joseph Kennedy, Jr., the older brother of future president John F. Kennedy, was one of his teammates). A newspaper account at the time gushed that Tashiro was as “shifty a halfback as has been seen near Harvard for many years.” After he completed a successful season with Harvard's frosh team, Tashiro was touted for stardom in college football.

In the end, however, he never played for Harvard’s varsity squad. At the time, newspaper accounts claimed that he had suffered an injury. In later years, however, he was more outspoken about the reasons for his absence: “I was declared ineligible after my freshman year because I had taught judo for money, which meant that I was a professional athlete. That didn't stop me. Any place I could find a ball game, I played.”

During his time at Harvard, Tashiro did not excel academically. He later explained that he devoted most of his time to going into Boston and other places for the nightlife. He played saxophone in a jazz band, and according to family lore, even performed with the noted bandleader Artie Shaw and was featured on one of Shaw’s recordings. He would remain a jazz buff in later years, and kept a full drum kit and a trumpet in his house.

Tashiro left Harvard after three years, stating that he saw no way to make a living as an archeologist, and in 1937 started his studies over again as a premed student at the University of Cincinnati, his father’s institution.

During this time, an international committee of Japanese-American newspaperman, voting on the basis of photos of college students in the United States and around the world, selected Tashiro as the “handsomest Japanese.” Tashiro responded to the hoopla by insisting laughingly that it would take him the rest of his life to “live down” his newly acquired honor. “I wish I’d never been given such a title…How I’ve been kidded since!”

A photo of Tashiro, showing the dapper young man in a suit and hat, was featured in the August 23, 1937 issue of LIFE magazine. An accompanying article, by Robert Bradley of Massachusetts, reported that Tashiro was not only a jiu-jitsu expert but a radio singer and actor known as the “Japanese King of Jazz.” (Although he would remain a jazz buff, I have been unable to document any of Tashiro’s work as a singer or actor).

In December 1937, journalist Norah Freeman reported in the Cincinnati Post that Tashiro, having become the world junior champion of jiu-jitsu, was called on to defend his title by a challenger, Kudo Natabe of Boston.  The two met secretly in a private house to contest the championship, while Jenro Shimon arrived from Los Angeles to act as the “neutral observer.” In the end, Tashiro defended his title successfully.

Once at Cincinnati, he joined the university’s Bearcats football team as a quarterback, but a shinbone injury led to his leaving the squad. In 1938, he rejoined the Bearcats as a halfback, but quit halfway through the season, for unexplained reasons, and never played for Cincinnati again.

In 1939, Tashiro and a fellow student, Paul Waltz, were arrested for passing a fraudulent check for $63.52 at the Second National Bank. Charged with violating the National Banking Laws, Tashiro was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison. However, due to his father’s eminent position and his own lack of a criminal record, the young Tashiro’s sentence was suspended.

In 1941, Tashiro completed his undergraduate studies, and he enrolled thereafter at University of Cincinnati Medical School, where he was a classmate of his brother Kazuo. During the war years, he went through medical school in Cincinnati. He later claimed that he had tried to enlist but was refused due to his Japanese ancestry. However, this is not altogether plausible. He ultimately joined the Army reserves. He completed his medical training by serving as an intern at the Jewish hospital in Cincinnati between October 1, 1944, and June 30, 1945. In fall 1945 was granted his physicians licence by the Ohio State medical board.

During this time, he suffered sorrow in his personal life. In 1944 he married Marianne Kanouse, but only a year later, in May 1945, Mrs. Tashiro died while giving birth to the couple’s son Joseph. Soon after, Kiyoshi married Charlotte Perkins, a student nurse at the Jewish hospital, with whom he had three more children. Tashiro later married a third wife, Karin, who was 26 years his junior. He and Karin would have four more children.

After completing his internship at the Jewish Hospital in Cincinnati, Dr. Tashiro practiced at St Thomas hospital in Akron, Ohio. He later moved to Kings County hospital, Long Island, New York and then Doctors Hospital, New York City. In the postwar years, he worked as a thoracic surgeon, specializing in tuberculosis care. He was named Supervising Tuberculosis Physician at Herman N. Biggs Memorial Hospital in Ithaca, New York.

In 1953 he was named Medical Director at Grand View Hospital in North Ironwood, Michigan, where he did that hospital’s first pulmonary surgeries. He gave multiple lectures to local club groups about pulmonary surgery, and also was an early champion of the Salk vaccine to prevent polio. he was named president of the county medical society. He also played semiprofessional softball, as a pitcher for the Norrie Amateur Sports Club team.

In late 1955, Tashiro resigned from Grand View Hospital and entered private practice in a local medical clinic in Ironwood  with two other local doctors. Six months later, however, he moved to Lockport, New York to become director of Surgery at the Niagara Chest Hospital (aka Niagara Sanatorium). In 1957 he resigned his position at Niagara and entered private practice in Dollgeville, New York.

In addition to his practice, Tashiro continued playing softball, and returned to football. As he later said, “I didn’t have the skills to be a pro, but I had the skills to play minor leagues and I enjoyed it.”

He first played as a halfback for the Lockport Esso team in the New York Semi Pro League. In a letter to Sports Illustrated, Robert Marriuci said that he had attended Lockport’s games and noticed a very fast right halfback. “He blocked viciously, hit the middle of the line and ran the ends like fury. He ran 85 yards for a touchdown against Batavia and set up two more on runs of 20 and 30 yards. In the game against Fredonia, he gained almost 200 yards, including runs of 70 and 55 yards.”

To his utter amazement, Marriuci discovered that the star player was a 40 year-old Nisei surgeon, Dr. Kiyo Tashiro. “When I met Dr. Tashiro, I asked him if the other ballplayers called him ‘Pappy.’ He smiled, shook his head and said, ‘No, they call me ‘Grandpappy.’” A photo of Tashiro accompanied the article.

In the years that followed, Tashiro continued both his medical practice and his sports. At 42, he was certifiably the oldest professional football player in the United States. He moved in 1958 from Lockport to play for the nearby Dolgeville Ramblers. In the years that followed, he helped found the Mohawk Valley Falcons, a semipro team in the Atlantic Coast League, played as halfback and wide receiver.

In 1963, the local newspaper Rome Daily Sentinel awarded Tashiro its Man of the Year in Sports award, in tribute to his still playing semi-professionally at forty-seven. He likewise appeared as himself on the television quiz show “To Tell the Truth.” 

In 1963, Sports Illustrated devoted an illustrated article to his football career, “Is There a Dr. Tashiro on the Field?” The article noted that he made $20 per game playing with the Falcons.

Tashiro took in stride the praise he received for his athleticism, and simultaneously pooh-poohed the criticism over the dangers he faced. “People thought I was crazy to risk my hands…Technique not as important as judgment in the operating room. In medical school they taught us to tie sutures with one hand. I once gashed my right hand on glass during a game, but I was in the operating room the next day.”

He told Sports Illustrated, “I have more endurance  than a lot of the players on the team, many young enough to be my sons. I love the game. I love the fellowship of sports. Why should I stop?”

Even as he continued playing football. Tashiro withdrew from practicing medicine over the following years. Always restless, he later claimed that he was not prepared to spend all his life in an operating room. Instead, he closed his practice and spent the next several years working in the pharmaceutical field, and working with a medical research foundation.

In 1973, Tashiro was hired as the new director of athletic medicine at Princeton University. In an interview, he stated that he considered the new position to be a perfect job.

“My duty here is to the boy first, Princeton second. We're going to set up functional screening exams for every athlete, test his neurology, his muscles, his joints, examine his history of injury. We’re going to continue to be damn careful and unkindly about letting kids play a sport like football if they have any history of serious injury.”

Although by that time Tashiro had retired from playing football, he continued to lift weights regularly, jog, and play basketball. He boasted that his waist was 33 inches, his chest 46 inches, and his neck 17½ inches. While at Princeton, Tashiro was named an honorary coach. The head couch, John Petercuskie, asked Tashiro to get into gear and run back punts in practice and pregame warmups.

Tashiro later explained, “It wasn’t to show me off, but to show the kids that an older person could.” Ultimately, Tashiro became so close to the students that they made him an honorary class member in 1976.

In 1976, aged 60, Tashiro left his position at Princeton and moved to California—while he stated that he needed extra money to pay for his children’s college education, the move also reflected his long history of restlessness. Once in California, he opened a private practice and served as a physician and colonel in the Army reserve.

For a period, he practiced at Chowchilla District Memorial Hospital in Madera County, and served as team doctor for Chowchilla and Yosemite High Schools. Later, he served as Chief of Staff at East Madera Medical Center in Oakhurst. According to his daughter Cathy Tashiro, he did a lot of emergency room shifts in this period, and would sometimes drive 2-3 hours to an emergency room and spend several days there providing urgent care. He died in Fresno, California in March 1999.

Photos that accompany this article did not appear in LIFE magazine. All are courtesy of Cathy Tashiro.

© 2024 Greg Robinson