Before Pearl Harbor

Before Pearl Harbor

Japanese Americans *** Sports *** Baseball ***

History Seattle area baseball and the Courier League before World War II. Harry Kataoka was a first-rate shortstop, and a good enough hitter that he knew just what to do when Yosh Tsuji left a pitch out over the plate that sunny July day on the Franklin High School field. "I got the big part of the bat on it," Kataoka said. The ball shot over the head of the left fielder to land on the turf beyond. "I went into third base standing up." That was 1941, in the semifinals of the annual Fourth of July tournament that marked the high point of the Japanese-American baseball season in the Pacific Northwest. The tournament was a much-anticipated event for the Japanese community in Seattle and beyond, drawing teams from throughout the region to play before thousands of fans. Despite Kataoka's triple, his Waseda team lost that Sunday morning game, 8-4, to the Western Giants, an elite Seattle team. In the afternoon, playing against the White River team from south of Auburn, the Giants won the championship, in a game that was final in more ways than one. That December, Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, igniting war with the United States. Within a few months, most of the Japanese-American baseball players, their families and their fans were gone, shipped by government order to internment camps hundreds of miles away. It was the end of a baseball era.

Roberts, Gregory

Seattle Post Intelligencer May 25, 2001

25-May-01

JP 5 R63 B44

1900.225