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
Olga Asato Hichiya: love and glory for volleyball
Oct. 26, 2020 • Luis Iguchi Iguchi
Three in the morning and the ringing of the clock did its job. Many homes in the country had their eyes fixed on the television and far, far away from the homeland, with the red and white in a rectangle of life that showed us the strength and talent of six girls who, with the power of the game, made Peruvian volleyball the habit of seeing them on the front page of newspapers, in sports articles, in the clamor of …
Remembering Nikkei weightlifting champions
Oct. 22, 2020 • Michael Tanouye
Nikkei athletes have won numerous national, world, and Olympic titles in the sport of weightlifting. Richard Tomita, Emerick Ishikawa, and Harold Sakata represented the US at the 1948 Olympics in London, along with Chinese American Richard Tom. Tom took the bronze medal in the bantamweight class, and Sakata took the silver medal in the light-heavyweight class. Sakata later achieved show business fame as Oddjob in the James Bond movie Goldfinger. Along with swimmers and divers, these lifters were in the …
The girls of yesterday
Oct. 19, 2020 • Luis Iguchi Iguchi
Twenty-seven years ago no one had the reason to call me old. Even though I was fifty-three, there were a good number of people in my environment who were considered elderly. The great AELU Tennis family was for me the beginning of practicing a new sport. I had never held a racket in my life, much less used it. Dressing in shorts and all in white was for me a new fashion and a feeling of entering a world outside …
Set point: The great AELU Tennis family
Oct. 12, 2020 • Luis Iguchi Iguchi
Remember is to live again. Twenty years ago, he wrote a column in the newspaper Perú Shimpo called “Set point”, and he signed it as 'El Pibe'. My passion for tennis was at its peak and I had Mr. Mario Teves as support in the newspaper. This column was purely sports, Mario accepted all kinds of innovations from me. From highlighting names or news, to accepting certain aspects of humorous writing. The activities of our beloved institution had the appropriate …
In search of the two earliest Asahi players, Kodama and Tabata - Part 2
Oct. 8, 2020 • Yobun Shima
Read Part 1 >> Kaichi Tabata’s family in Japan After the induction medal issue was settled, I received mail on November 27, 2019 from Keiichi Tabata in Japan. Dear Mr. Shima, Let me introduce myself. I am Keiichi Tabata, grandson of Kaichi Tabata who is the first baseball player of Vancouver Asahi. ….My grandfather Kaichi Tabata was born in Suzuka City, Mie, Japan in 1895, married with Nobu and had seven children (4 boys and 3 girls). My late father …
In search of the two earliest Asahi players, Kodama and Tabata - Part 1
Oct. 7, 2020 • Yobun Shima
The Legendary Vancouver Asahi baseball team was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 2003 and in 2005, the Asahi team was inducted into the BC Sports Hall of Fame. Although the Asahi team and the players were inducted, there were 26 Asahi players whose induction medals from the BC Sports Hall of Fame remained unclaimed by their families. It was because more than 60 years had passed since the team was disbanded in 1941 after the war …
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