In 1935, the Takahashis’ next-door neighbor on Pine Street brought one of his younger sisters to San Francisco from the family home in Hiroshima.
Sakaye was nineteen. Like her three sisters (Momoko, Misao, and Masako) and younger brother, Shigeru (my dad), Sakaye had been born in Berkeley, where her parents ran a grocery store on Telegraph Avenue. In 1926, when she was about 11, the Sasaki family had returned to Hiroshima. The children had a difficult time adjusting to Japanese culture after growing up in the U.S. Momoko and Misao had been pressured into arranged marriages after returning to Japan, but Sakaye was proving to be somewhat recalcitrant, and perhaps her mother thought that after a year in the U.S. she would be ready to settle down.
Sakaye was thrilled to have the opportunity to return to California. Kiyo Takahashi next door was a couple of years older and took her along to dances at the YWCA. Kiyo could also drive a car, so Sakaye went with the Takahashis to places like Santa Cruz.
The young Nisei men of Japantown were just as thrilled to meet “new blood.” Sakaye was extremely popular — so popular that Mr. Sasaki (her brother, and the eldest of the Sasaki siblings) decided to cut her year short. He worried that she would get into mischief with someone “unsuitable” if she stayed. So Sakaye was sent back to Hiroshima.
That same year, a young Japanese-Hawaiian baseball player named Fumito Jimmy Horio was touring the U.S. and Canada as the star shortstop of the DaiNippon Tokyo Baseball Club (which became the Tokyo Giants, then the Yomiuri Giants). He was the first American to play pro baseball in Japan. The previous year (1934), he had been on the All-Nippon team that had played against the U.S. All-Stars, including Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, on their good-will tour of Japan.
Jimmy’s family had emigrated from Hiroshima to Hawaii, where Jimmy was born and played plantation baseball. His family, like the Sasakis, eventually returned to Hiroshima, but Jimmy stayed in the U.S. to play baseball, first with the Los Angeles Nippons, and then with the Sioux Falls Canaries. Facing overt racial prejudice as a member of the Nebraska team, Jimmy had decided to try out for the All-Nippon team that was being assembled to play against Babe Ruth’s All-Stars, hoping to get a shot at the majors.
In one game in that series, a 17-year-old All-Nippon pitcher named Eiji Sawamura struck out nine (including Ruth, Gehrig, Jimmy Foxx and Charlie Gehringer), giving up only one run. Sawamura would go on to become an ace pitcher for the Tokyo Giants, pitching the first no-hitter in Japanese baseball, only to be killed in action by an American torpedo at the age of 27 near the end of World War II.
Overall, the All-Nippon team was creamed by the U.S. All-Stars — but it was Jimmy Horio who scored the first run of the series. He was not signed by a major-league team, and after his stint with the Tokyo Giants, he played for a couple of other Japanese pro teams.
On a visit to Hiroshima sometime around 1937, Jimmy was passing a photographer’s studio and was stopped by one particular portrait. He had to find out who the young lady in the photo was.
It was Sakaye.
Sakaye was now 22. Her family was in the process of arranging a marriage with a Japanese doctor. Sakaye had other ideas.
Jimmy and Sakaye were married in 1938. They moved to Hawaii in mid-1941, thus escaping the fate that awaited many of their Hiroshima relatives.
Sadly, Jimmy died of cancer in 1949 at the age of 42. Sakaye went to work at the telephone company to raise her boys.
To me, she was my Hawaiian auntie. We didn’t see her very often, but she occasionally visited San Francisco. My dad would take her to Berkeley to see their old family home on Carleton Street. She visited after my dad died, and I took her, my mom and aunt Kiyo down the peninsula to sunny San Mateo, away from the fog (Hawaiians always freeze in San Francisco), to have sushi.
Most of the extended-family members we had around us growing up were on my mother’s side of the family. Since my dad’s family (except for my dad) had ended up mostly in Japan, we didn’t know them very well. Sakaye was probably the closest, being in Hawaii and English speaking, but on the few occasions when we met, I felt we didn’t know each other at all. After my short-story collection was published, she urged me to get true-crime ideas from the newspaper for my next book. I inwardly rolled my eyes, not that it was bad advice, but it just wasn’t “me.”
On her last visit, my sister and brother-in-law took her to Tahoe to gamble, along with my brother-in-law’s mom, who was delighted with the outing. (Of course, my mom and aunt Kiyo did not go.) On the way home, everyone came to my place for lunch. I may have barbecued chicken and made chirashizushi and peach and apple pie. I’m not much of a cook, so having people over for a meal (or “cooking in public,” as I call it), can be something of a risky proposition.
As she was leaving to be driven to the airport, she told me I should get married. “Bit late for that,” I replied. “Why?” she said, “You’re only 27!” (I was actually closer to 47 at the time.) “You deserve it,” she said. I remember feeling that gulf again; but at the same time, I was incredibly touched because I knew she meant it as a compliment. After all, we did have something in common: I probably would have opted for the baseball player over the doctor, too.
Read more about Jimmy Horio‘s career.
Dai Nippon Tokyo Baseball Club. Photographer: Stuart Thomson. Courtesy of City of Vancouver Archives, CVA 99-4753. Public domain.
Portrait of Sakaye: © Hugh Horio. Used with kind permission.
Other images: © R. A. Sasaki. All rights reserved.
No Comments Yet