Nikkei Chronicles #9—More Than a Game: Nikkei Sports
What makes Nikkei sports more than just a game for you? Perhaps you’d like to write about your Nikkei sports hero or the impact of Japanese athletes on your Nikkei identity. Did your parents meet through a Nikkei basketball or bowling league? Are you intrigued by an important chapter of Nikkei sports history, like the prewar Issei and Nisei baseball teams?
For the ninth edition of Nikkei Chronicles, Discover Nikkei solicited stories related to Nikkei sports from June to October of 2020. Voting closed on November 30, 2020. We received 31 stories (19 English; 6 Japanese; 7 Spanish; and 1 Portuguese), with a few submitted in multiple languages. We asked an editorial committee to pick their favorites and our Nima-kai community to vote for their favorite stories. Here are the selected favorite stories.
Editorial Committee’s Favorites
- ENGLISH:
Why Coach Sports? Bob Kodama’s Legacy Coaching Youth Sports
By Michael Kodama - JAPANESE:
Family History of Kenichi Doi, Vancouver Asahi pitcher in 1926
By Yobun Shima - SPANISH:
60th Anniversary: Close to the Heart
By Luis Iguchi Iguchi - PORTUGUESE:
Our Daily Radio Taiso Workouts
By Edna Hiromi Ogihara Cardoso
Nima-kai Favorite:
- 33 Stars
My Love and Life in Sports
By Robert “Lefty” Kikkawa, Ken Kikkawa
<<Community Partner: Terasaki Budokan - Little Tokyo Service Center>>
Stories from this series
Dave Roberts, Mr. Santa Barbara Dodger, Tommy Lasorda, and “Fred” Sinatra
Nov. 16, 2020 • Michael Goro Takeuchi
When manager Dave Roberts and the Los Angeles Dodgers clinched a long awaited World Series title, the journalist in me felt pretty happy for one of the truly good guys I wrote about over the years as a player, coach, and skipper. As a fellow Nikkei, watching the Okinawa born Roberts, whose mother is Japanese and late father African American, the same scene elicited more powerful feelings within while triggering childhood memories of watching baseball games with Mr. Santa Barbara …
Why Coach Sports? Bob Kodama’s Legacy Coaching Youth Sports
Nov. 15, 2020 • Michael Kodama
My Father, Bob Seiko Kodama, was a Nisei born in Seattle, Washington in 1931. His parents operated hotels in Downtown Seattle. He spent the early part of his life exploring the waterfront. In 1942, along with 120,000 other Japanese Americans, Bob and his family were rounded up and sent to an internment camp. His family was sent to Minidoka, Idaho. It is hard to imagine what it is like to be 10 years old and be locked up by your …
My Love and Life in Sports
Nov. 12, 2020 • Robert “Lefty” Kikkawa , Ken Kikkawa
Until my beloved wife Alice passed away suddenly last year, I considered myself the luckiest man in the world. We were happily married for 65 years and we had 4 grown children and 10 grandchildren. In perfect gender symmetry, we had two daughters and two sons, and they in turn gave us 5 granddaughters and 5 grandsons. We did almost everything together—including watching lots of games. We first watched our daughters play JAO basketball and softball, high school archery, badminton, …
60th Anniversary: Close to the Heart
Nov. 11, 2020 • Luis Iguchi Iguchi
Letter to my granddaughter Karina and grandson Cristian: It’s two o’clock in the morning and in the silence of the living room, I still see the Christmas tree with the lights turned off, rigid and noticeably transcendent. The colored balls possess the prelude of a nostalgia that memory has a certain magic charm to enjoy, even after the holidays are over: the presence of a ten-year-old girl and the mischievous impulsiveness of a six-year-old boy. …
Stranger Skater From Nowhere
Nov. 10, 2020 • Spencer Fujimoto
October 31, 2020 Wow, lost the first draft… So going to write in one sitting. Technology and me… I am more of an analog guy. In typical skateboard fashion I started this project the last day, in the 11th hour… I am “gosei” meaning 5th generation in Japanese, in western culture it would be considered 4th generation Japanese American, or just “Chinese, chinaman, or respectfully, chino.” I got sponsored in 1989, turned pro in ’95, retired from pro-skateboarding in 2003, …
Family History of Kenichi Doi, Vancouver Asahi pitcher in 1926
Nov. 9, 2020 • Yobun Shima
Kenichi Doi was a pitcher for the Vancouver Asahi baseball team in 1926 who originally played with the Cumberland baseball team on Vancouver Island B.C. Canada. I am lucky that my friend Norm Ibuki introduced me to his close friend, George Doi, Kenichi Doi’s son, who shared his father’s history with me. George was just a child during the height of Kenichi’s baseball days, so he does not have any memories of the actual games, other than getting into the …
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