BASEBALL
Baseball
has always been a favorite national pastime for many Americans.
In Hawaii, where Japanese Americans comprised a majority, Japanese
Americans formed baseball teams that gained immense popularity
prior to World War II. The Nisei (second generation Japanese American)
were drawn to baseball instead of football because football favored
taller and heavier players, characteristics that were not common
amongst Japanese American men. Baseball games began on the sugar
plantations as recreation, and taught the Nisei boys the teamwork
skills that would be necessary in the battles to come. Most of
the semi-amateur players in Hawaii, such as “Turtle”
Omiya, were part of the 100th Infantry Battalion (Separate).
The Nisei soldiers played baseball as hard as they worked. They
even formed a baseball team when they arrived at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin.
Despite the rigorous military training, the practice field was
full of players ready to go at the end of each day. Through baseball,
the Nisei continued to build their teamwork skills and camaraderie
and played friendship games with local teams all over Wisconsin.
Baseball served as a universal door opener. With the caricatures
of the buck-toothed, slanted-eye enemy in the newspapers, many
spectators failed to recognize the Japanese heritage of these
All-American baseball players. Instead, they appreciated them
for who they were not what the media portrayed them to be. With
the word “Aloha” on the front of their uniforms, they
were greeted with questions about the islands and they responded
sometimes in “pidgin,” the local slang in Hawaii.
They were warm and generous with the people they met.
PERSONAL FOCUS: PFC. YOSHINAO “TURTLE” OMIYA
One of the men of the 100th Infantry Battalion was Yoshinao
“Turtle” Omiya. Turtle had been the captain of the
McKinley High School championship baseball team in Honolulu, Oahu.
While at Camp McCoy, he was one of the starters of the Aloha team
and played in the friendship games against local Wisconsin teams.
When the 100th reached North Africa, they were assigned to the
34th Division. Members of the Aloha team played for the 34th Division
team in the race to be the best baseball team stationed in North
Africa. With a runner on second, Turtle, said to be the slowest
runner on the team, hit a double that led the team to the championship.
This would be his last moment of glory before landing in Italy.
On October 3, 1943 near the Volturno River, Lt. Sparky Matsunaga
was leading his men to quickly provide heavy weapons that were
needed. As a soldier climbed through the olive groves, he tripped
a “Bouncing Betty” – a mine that springs into
the air before exploding, sending jagged scraps of metal in all
directions. Turtle was just behind that soldier. As Turtle strained
against a hill, head down to watch his step, the man ahead of
him stopped suddenly. The last image Turtle saw was a “blue
flash as shrapnel hit” his right eye.
A tiny piece of metal, one that would have probably harmlessly
bounced off any other part of his body, shattered his right eye
and the shock to his system blinded him in the left eye as well.
That was the last battle for Turtle and he was sent home, blind.
His long journey home included a photograph in "Life"
magazine showing a “blind Nisei” in a hospital cot,
with his eyes covered with cotton swabs and adhesive tape. It
was from this moving photo that his widowed mother in Hawaii discovered
that her son had lost his sight.
The
photo of Turtle created controversy as witnessed in the letters
to the editor in subsequent issues. Some criticized this photo
for portraying someone with Japanese blood, while others used
it as an answer to racism. Turtle’s photo helped change
the view that many Americans had of Japanese Americans and inspired
others to take steps to help veterans like Turtle regain what
had been taken away from them.
Earl Finch, a Mississippi rancher that had befriended the Nisei
soldiers training nearby, arranged for Turtle to travel to the
seeing eye dog training center in Morristown, New Jersey. At the
center, Turtle met his new friend Audrey, a German shepherd who
became his constant companion and returned home with him to Hawaii
to live with his mother and sister next to field where he learned
to play baseball.
Turtle never really recovered. A few years later, Audrey was
tragically killed when a car hit her. He never married and died
in 1984.
