1964 Olympic gymnast, Shuji Tsurumi, gets ready for his torch lighting. (photos by Roy Tomizawa)
Like so much about this year’s Tokyo2020 run up, the Tokyo2020 torch relay is not a joyous event.
The crowds are small, as required.
The cheering is muted, as required.
But the show goes on, as required.
Compliance is running the show. It’s safe. It’s just not…..fun.
Having said that, it was wonderful to see two-time Olympian, six-time medalist, Shuji Tsurumi, who won 1 gold medal and 3 silver medals in men’s gymnastics for Team Japan at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics!
As has been the case in other prefectures, the running displays on the public roads were cancelled, replaced by “torch kiss” ceremonies, where torch bearers are brought together to have their torch lit by the flame of another. By removing this act from the roads, the organizers can control the number and behavior of the spectators.
On the afternoon of Saturday, July 3, ceremonies were held for torch bearers from Chiba prefecture in Matsudo Central Park, very near Matsudo Station in Chiba . At the 4pm ceremony, Tsurumi was the first person on stage, befitting his legendary Olympic record.
Tsurumi’s torch was lit by a staff member on stage.
Another resident of Chiba, Asako Yanase arrived, and Tsurumi tilted his torch towards the tip of Yanase’s torch in an igniting “kiss.” This was followed by “kisses” to nine other torchbearers, a group photo, and then an exit to ready the stage for another 11 torchbearers.
Spectators were by invitation only, and the overall numbers were limited, so guests could stay as socially distant as they preferred. But the atmosphere was low key, a sign of things to come for the actual Games.
With limited to no spectators expected in a few weeks, the athletes will have to psyche themselves up.
Welcome to Tokyo2020.
The Quiet Games.
Shuji Tsurumi, fittingly with torches from both 2020 and 1964.
Asakusa – the top bridge in upper right hand corner is Kototoi Bridge. Photo taken at The Center of the Tokyo Air Raids and War Damage.
It was chaos on Kototoi Bridge.
B-29s were buzzing above as fire fell from the sky. Kikujima Koji, 13, was holding the hand of his 8-year-old sister, Harue, his parents standing paralyzed as panicked residents crossed the bridge from both directions trying to escape the fires all around them. Koji decided he needed to act, and continued to cross the Sumida River to Mukojima.
That was the last time Koji saw his parents as he dragged his sister over other people to cross the bridge. It was past midnight on Saturday, March 10, 1945, and the temperature before the American bombers appeared was icy cold. But when the hundreds of B-29 Superfortress bombers began their two-and-a-half hour campaign on the Eastern part of Tokyo between the Sumida and Arakawa rivers, the air was searingly hot, as Koji relayed to the writer, Saotome Katsumoto in his book “The Great Tokyo Air Raid (東京大空襲―昭和20年3月10日の記録).”
In the intense heat, my clothes quickly became bone dry and my eyes were burning. Drenching ourselves again and again with water from the roadside and crouching low, we crawled forward until we reached Kinshi Park. We made our way to a water storage tank in the park.
I soaked my gloves in the water and used them to beat off the sparks on our clothes. Brushing off the sparks, warding off smoke, and covering our hands and mouth with the wet gloves, we somehow made it through to the morning. Many of the trees around us were burned, but Harue and I had survived. We looked at each other and breathed a sigh of relief. My school coat was full of holes made by the sparks, my trousers were in shreds, and Harue’s feet were bare.
The view from Ningyocho area. Extending the view through the upper left hand corner of the picture for another 4 kilometers would take you to Kinshi Park. Photo taken at The Center of the Tokyo Air Raids and War Damage.
Kinshi Park in Kinshicho
As night turned to early morning, Koji and Harue saw charred bodies everywhere, “naked mannequins painted with black ink.” Over the next few days, bodies from all over the neighborhood were carted to Kinshi Park, where over 13,000 bodies were buried in mass graves (until they were moved to more formal burial plots later that year). In fact, parks all over that part of Tokyo were suddenly requisitioned for the immediate burial of the dead.
I know Kinshi Park. When I joined a company in 2016, my office was in Olinas Tower, which is situated across the street from Kinshi Park. I’ve taken many pictures of cherry blossoms there. Families descend on Kinshi Park on the weekends. On any given day, Kinshi Park is a celebration of family and friends.
Kinshi Park with Olinas Tower and Skytree in the background, Spring 2019
I never suspected its past was cloaked in unspeakable tragedy.
In fact, Kinshicho was at the center of what is commonly called the single most destructive bombing raid in human history. It is estimated that about 100,000 people died that day in Tokyo.
In 1945, Olinas Tower and the Olinas Mall next to it did not exist. At that time, the watchmaker Seiko had a factory, a solid three-story cement structure that stretched the length of Kinshi Park across the street. This factory was built after the one before it was felled by the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923, and was torn down in 1997.
Seiko Factory Kinshicho_1988
In 1945, Seiko was making munition parts, and because of its prominent size, may have been a target of the B-29 bombers. But that entire area, today lovingly called “shita-machi,” (a nostalgic way of calling the area “downtown”), was filled with small family-run shops that were making parts for the larger manufacturers feeding the war effort.
Trying to discriminate between civilian areas and war industry in the midst of downtown Tokyo was a challenge from 20,000 feet in the sky. So Major General Curtis LeMay asked the simple question – why try?
The map of Eastern Tokyo, or “shitamachi” that was ravaged by incendiary bombs. The red line indicates the general target area for the B-29s on March 10, 1945. The areas shaded pink are where the fires raged. The red circles represent the number of bodies buried in temporary graves. I added names of locations familiar to residents of Japan. This map is large and is displayed on a wall in the Center of the Tokyo Air Raids and War Damage.
LeMay and the Perfect Storm
In the summer of 1944, the United States Navy won critical battles against the Japanese Navy to control three islands in the Marianas: Saipan, Tinian and Guam. The strategic importance of these islands was huge as they immediately put Japan in range of a new American bomber. The B-29 Super Fortress could fly for about 3,500 miles, which was just right since the Marianas were about 1,500 miles south of Tokyo. A B-29 could carry 4 tons of bombs to Tokyo and still have enough fuel to make the return back.
In late 1944, after the American military very quickly built massive air bases and runways on the three islands, the B-29s started to make sorties to knock out factories and disrupt Japan’s war production. But as Malcolm Gladwell explains in this fascinating podcast about napalm, LeMay and the firebomb attacks on Tokyo, the initial attempts to knock out Japan’s war production failed.
The philosophy at that time was to use precision bombing to blow up military targets and Major General Haywood Hansell stuck to that philosophy. In order to hit a military target, you had to see it. That meant his bombers flew during the day time. But to avoid Japanese fighters and anti-aircraft artillery, that also meant flying high in the sky, at least 20,000 feet in the air.
At the end of 1944, a major target was Nakajima Aircraft, which built fighter planes (but today builds Subaru cars). But no matter how hard the pilots tried, they did little damage to the factory in Western Tokyo.
When LeMay replaced Hansell, the philosophy was flipped. We’re simply too high up in the sky for precision bombing, reasoned LeMay. And the goal is to win the war, which can be accelerated by increasing the level of intimidation through indiscriminate bombing. LeMay decided to fly lower, around 7,000 feet. But since that was within range of anti-military craft and fighter planes, he decided also to fly at night.
M69 Incendiary Bomb; Photo taken at The Center of the Tokyo Air Raids and War Damage.
He targeted the eastern part of Tokyo – shitamachi – as it was the most densely populated area speckled with small to medium size manufactures. And he decided to drop incendiary bombs, the napalm bomb, freshly developed in the research halls of Harvard University, to maximize its destructive impact. Tokyo homes and buildings were composed primarily of wood. And because March was known as the windiest month in Japan, the expectations were that the wind would spread the fires ignited by the napalm bombs and thus widen the destruction beyond the drop areas.
If ever a plan came to fruition, it was on March 10, 1945. Two hundred and seventy nine B-29s dropped 609,000 pounds of incendiary bombs, burning to the ground fifteen square miles of Tokyo. As historian Edward E Gordon explained in his talk entitled “Fireball in the Night: The Bombing of Japan, 1944-45,”
The Red Wind (as it was called in Japanese) drove temperatures upwards of 1800 degrees Fahrenheit, creating a super-heated vapor that advanced ahead of the flames, and killed or incapacitated the victims. The mechanisms of death were multiple and simultaneous: oxygen deprivation, carbon monoxide poisoning, radiant heat, direct flames and debris, and trampling crowds.
Saotome Katsumoto wrote these words as an adult, remembering the feelings of helplessness he had as a 12-year-old boy.
In every direction – east, west, south and north – the dark sky was scorched with crimson flames. The steady roar of the B-29s’ engines overhead was punctuated by piercing screeches followed by cascading sounds like sudden showers. With each explosion, a flash of light darted behind my eyelids. The ground shook. Flames appeared one after another. As our neighbors looked outside their air raid shelters defiantly holding their bamboo fire brooms, they cursed when they saw how fiercely the fires were burning. They were helpless against the raging flames. Fire trucks, sirens wailing, were already speeding toward the fires, but what could they do in this gusting wind and intensive bombardment? Even in the eyes of a child, the situation seemed hopeless.
Ueno; Photo taken at The Center of the Tokyo Air Raids and War Damage.
Saotome Katsumoto and The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage
It was June 13,1967 and Katsumoto read an article in the Mainichi Shimbun that brought back a flood of memories of that horrible morning of March 10, 1945. In the midst of repair work to tracks of the subway station Monzen-nakacho, construction workers uncovered the grisly remains of an air raid shelter 15 meters below the surface. The workers found the huddled remains of four adults and two children, evidence of burn marks on the bones.
A man named Tszuzuki Shizuo identified the deceased as his wife, daughter, mother in law, her two other daughters and a grandchild. An established author who had already penned 7 books, Katsumoto felt compelled to interview Tsuzuki, who declined. Undeterred, Katsumoto went on to interview victims of the Tokyo firebombings and publish in 1971 the book, “The Great Tokyo Air Raid.” In the introduction, he wrote:
I was turned away at the door many times, and not one of those who agreed to be interviewed was calm or composed. As if on cue, they all broke down during their accounts and, sitting there with my pen in hand, I was unable to look up at them. The scars are still deep. These wounds will never heal as long as they live. For them the “postwar” period will never end.
Katsumoto understood that despite the pain of remembrances past, revisiting this time and place was critical to our future. “However painful it might be, confronting people’s actual experience of war will surely help to build a firm foothold for peace.”
On March 9, 2002, The Center of the Tokyo Air Raids and War Damage opened, its location in Koto-ku very much a part of flattened, rubble-strewn aftermath of March 10, 1945, its appointed director, Mr Saotome Katsumoto, a keeper of memories.
Take a walk along the Yokojikken River from Sumiyoshi Station and visit The Center.
Sergei Palchikoff with his music students in Hiroshima
“Imagine coming out of a subway station in New York and all you see is horizon,” said Jan Palchikoff. That was her way of imagining what her father witnessed when he arrived in Hiroshima a few weeks after it was flattened by the first atomic bomb ever used in military conflict.
Jan was an Olympic rower who competed in the double sculls at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, one of nearly 400 who competed on Team USA. But her story of why she competed as an American is distinctly unique.
In 1942, after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor at the end of 1941, Jan’s father, Nikolay, was 17 years old and he wanted to join the US Army. He had emigrated to America in 1940, attended high school in Los Angeles and then worked odd jobs as a janitor and sales before answering the call for army recruits.
He wasn’t even an American citizen. But he did speak fluent Japanese and Russian.
Nikolay eventually made his way to the Pacific theater, lent out to the Navy to question Japanese soldiers and listen in on radio conversations in Japanese. He did intelligence work in New Caledonia and the Philippines, roaming the seas in an American naval convoy as kamikaze pilots and Mitsubishi G4M bombers attacked.
When Japan surrendered, Nikolay was sent to Japan to help seek out safe places for American troops to land in the Tokyo area to ensure the safety of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, General Douglas MacArthur, for the surrender ceremony. And when MacArthur oversaw the signing of the instrument of surrender on the USS Missouri, Nikolay watched from a higher perch on the USS General Pershing, which was docked next to the Missouri.
With his primary duty in Japan done, Nikolay insisted that he be allowed to go to Hiroshima. Only one month after the atomic bomb was dropped on that city, the Army intended to send him to Korea, and was reluctant to send a random American soldier over 800 kilometers to the Western part of Japan which was not yet considered safe and secure.
But Nikolay was insistent. After all, Hiroshima was where he was born, and where his parents were.
Nikolay’s father, Sergei Palchikoff, was a Tsarist from Kazan, Russia, who fought the Communists across Imperial Russia before commandeering a ship in Vladivostok and escaping to Japan. Sergei and a few other Russian families ended up staying in Hiroshima.
A jarring fixture in Hiroshima, the Caucasian Palchikoffs stood out in the Japanese streets. Sergei made his way and built up social capital by teaching violin in an all-girls school, as well as teaching Russian and English.
Nikolay was born in Hiroshima, feeling at home playing Japanese war games with his neighborhood friends. As he said in this Japanese article, “When I lived in Hiroshima, I had many friends and I had never been treated as a foreigner. I was accepted as a single Hiroshima person – swimming, fishing in the river, riding around the city by bicycle.”
Nikolay Palchikoff as a child in Hiroshima (from the collection of Jan Palchikoff)
However, as the 21-year-old approached Hiroshima on the train, he began to realize that his hometown would not be the same. His train passed the Kurii Naval Base and “you could see that all the Japanese ships were rusting, turned over” as Kurii had been shelled “for three days and nights. And I thought, “My god, Hiroshima couldn’t possibly be worse than this. And I was wrong.”
There was of course, nothing alive, no plants. No birds chirping. In Japan, there are these cicadas, and they make noise all day long. They’re up in the trees, and we used to try to catch them. Nothing. Dead silence. And I approached my house. There was nothing there, except my wrought-iron bed is used to sleep in, so I knew I was at the right place.
Nikolay could not find his family amidst the rubble. When he encountered one of the Parasuchin’s, one of the few other Russians living in Hiroshima, Nikolay was informed that the Russians were rounded up by the police and had taken them all to the mountainside. Whatever the reason for that, the Palchikoff’s were not in the central part of Hiroshima when the bomb hit. In fact, Nikolay’s parents, as well as his brother, David, and sister, Kaleria, were still alive!
The Palchikoffs were moved to a town called Taishaku away from the bomb blast and the initial spray of radiation. As far as the family in Hiroshima knew, their eldest son was in high school in America. But then one day, he shows up on their doorstep in a uniform, one of the first American soldiers to appear in Hiroshima.
It is hard to fathom the emotions of such a reunion. Most of this narrative is taken from an interview of Nikolay in May, 2003. In the parts of the transcript where Nikolay is describing his return to Hiroshima, you can see the word “Cries” in brackets, where Nikolay apparently would be talking through his tears.
Nikolay’s sister, Kaleria, was interviewed shortly after the end of the war, her memories an example of the horrors the people of Hiroshima witnessed. In this excerpt, broadcasted on NPR, she described her shock at seeing people whose skin color were burned dark by the blast, and the subsequent radiation sickness that befell them.
We saw Negroes. They weren’t Japanese. They were Negroes. I asked them what happened to them. ‘We saw the flash and this is the color we turned.’ We reached the military hospital. I stayed there for two days. There were people wounded, badly wounded. The skin just peeled off. Some of them you could see the bone. The eyes were closed, the nose bled, the lips swelled, the whole head started swelling. As soon as they gave them water, they vomited it all out, and they would keep on vomiting until they died. On the second day, the wounds became yellow in color, and it would go deeper and deeper. No matter how much you tried to take off the yellow rotten flesh it would go deeper and deeper.
Can you spot Kaleria Palchikoff in her class picture?
Nikolay had to return to duty back in Tokyo, and then in Korea. In the meanwhile, he made sure that his parents and siblings got safe transport back to Tokyo. He was also able to get his father a job in the Officers’ Club in Tokyo. In January, 1946, Nikolay was allowed to return to the United States, and he was able to bring his family with him.
After returning stateside, Nikolay had an appendicitis attack and went to the hospital, where he had his appendix removed, and his heart stolen by a nurse named Dawn Clarke. Nikolay and Dawn got married, and had four children: Jan, Kim, Kai and Jay.
Jan rowed for UCLA, and then for Team USA at the Montreal Olympics. She is still an active athlete who competes in Masters competitions in cycling. She also currently serves as the senior vice president for sports & programs for Special Olympics Southern California.
But the journey of her family that brought Jan to achieve Olympian heights was a century-long road through the Siberian steppes and the atomic wasteland of Hiroshima.
Remembering my grandparents and my parents, it occurs to me now that one of the common threads that runs through our lives is simple perseverance – necessary for survival and for facing adversity and challenges. My grandparents’ story and how my dad ended up in the US and met my mother has always filled me with awe, wonder and inspiration. While I was not fighting for my life in sport, I am positive that the drive my grandparents had is alive in me today. Perseverance and the drive to succeed most certainly are defining factors in my journey as an athlete and in my individual character.
Imagine over 40,000 people coming together in front of stunning Heian Jingu in Kyoto, people of all ages from all over the world, smiling and happy to be in Japan.
It’s hard to imagine that scene today, a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has left the biggest tourist destinations of the world, including the popular former capital of Japan, bereft of visitors. But that’s what Jens V. Holm sees in his head, in May of 2021. That’s when the World Masters Games 2021 Kansai takes place, the global sporting event that brings together two to three times the number of athletes than the Summer Olympics.
Holm is the CEO of IMGA, or the International Masters Games Association, and he expects to be in Japan from May 14 to 30 of next year, during the 17 days of the first ever World Masters Games (WMG) in Asia.
The WMG invites anyone 30 years of age or older to compete in 35 sporting disciplines ranging from track and field and swimming events to team events like baseball and rugby, to lesser known competitive sports like tug of war or orienteering. Held every four years, the year after an Olympic year, WMG is becoming one of the most popular Big Tent sporting events in the world.
A significant difference between WMG and the Olympics is that while the Olympics invite national teams, the WMG invites individuals, which means there is no mass directives from committees to dictate whether an athlete will attend or not attend. And while Holm, like the rest of us, does not know if there will be a vaccine by the end of the year, he does know we will be better prepared in 2021. “We will take precautions, do proper risk management,” he said. “We have spread the venues out over the entire region of Kansai so that we won’t have all the people in one area during the Games.”
The World Masters Games Kansai 2021 is Japan’s “canary in the coal mine” – the event that will determine the confidence the world has in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and whether the world will also come together for the opening ceremony on July 23. As we approach the Fall of 2020, we can look to the “health” of the canary, hoping to hear the chirpy notes indicating WMG is ready for flight in 2021.
And WMG can fly.
In the shadow of the Olympics, FIFA World Cup and other massive international sports events, the World Masters Games has quietly built up a tremendous fan base of participants. Additionally, Holm said that cities are eager to bring the Games to their areas, with four cities currently bidding for WMG 2025: Perth, Taipei, Paris and Singapore.
While the Olympics generally get a lot of bad press about budget overruns and white elephant “legacies,” the World Masters Games creates significant return on investment to the host city, without the development of any new infrastructure. In fact they insist that the host city employs only existing infrastructure. The World Masters Games focuses on attracting participants from around the world, like a major marathon or triathlon event, to generate revenue, not on television rights, spectator ticket sales or sponsorships like the IOC does. Holm explained that the IMGA is a non-profit, and that the purpose of the Masters Games is to serve as a tourism event.
Our focus is on the host cities making money, not the IMGA. We charge the host city rights fees, but always less than the city receives from the athletes in registration fees, so the organizers start in the black. And we don’t allow the city to build anything. This way all their investment into operating the games will serve as an investment in tourism. The big revenue generation for the host city or region is athletes paying for their own travel and accommodation.
In fact, if you watch the promotional video for WMG 2021 Kansai, it is essentially a tourism video enticing athletes to experience the beauty and cuisine of the nine prefectures hosting sporting events during the games.
Holm said that prior to the pandemic outbreak, expectations were that WMG Kansai was going to be their most popular event ever. While the last WMG saw over 28,000 athletes gather in Auckland, New Zealand in 2017, Holm was expecting a record-breaking 50,000 athletes, half from Japan, and half from overseas. And these athletes are above average spenders.
“The average age for both men and women is 51,” said Holm. “The athletes who come from overseas end up taking two weeks off to participate, indicating they tend to be from higher income groups. And 77% of them have a university degree. With high income and high education, you have more time and resources to focus on your health. That fits in very well with the Japan market, which is focused on building their tourism industry, as well as working to ensure their aging population has an active lifestyle.”
So without the financial burden of building costly infrastructure like sports venues or athlete accommodations, among other things, and the focus primarily on attracting motivated athletes (not spectators), the World Masters Games model has proven to have a positive impact on the host economy. An independently researched report on WMG2017 in Auckland, New Zealand stated that the “return on Auckland’s investment in WMG2017 was 151%, calculated as $34.2 million (WMG’s contribution to regional GDP) divided by $22.6 million (Auckland’s investment in WMG2017).”
Jens V. Holm, CEO of the International Masters Games Association (IMGA)
A good part of that return on investment came from the over 27,000 visitors to Auckland who spent a total of 241,480 nights in hotels and Airbnb venues, staying on average 8.9 nights. The 17,000 overseas visitor spent over USD56 million in New Zealand, a fifth of that from visitors who flew in via the national carrier, Air New Zealand.
This is what the leaders of the nine prefectures in the Kansai region are hoping for, a jolt to re-energize their tourism ecosystem.
“That’s why we had it on the drawing board to spread venues across the region,” said Holm. “There is so much to see in Kansai from a tourism point of view. And the infrastructure is very good. This will be an excellent way for the country to promote itself.”
Nearly 70% of people do not expect the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games to be held as scheduled, according to a Kyodo News survey in early March.
The reason is the global impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
From Shanghai to Rome, from London to New York, we’re seeing the most populous cities in the world turn into ghost towns overnight.
So while the Japanese feel that holding the Olympics and Paralympics may be impossible this year, they are doing so in a country that is surprisingly sociable. While the same Kyodo News survey showed that 44.3% of the Japanese survey disapproved of the government measures, people are out and about in ways that would be shocking to people elsewhere in the world.
People out and about on March 15 in my neighborhood in Meguro (left), and on March 21 in Shibuya (right).
At least Japanese are refraining from movie theaters_Futagotamagawa on Sunday afternoon, March 8.
Is Japan exceptional? We’ll have to wait for the research after the pandemic has run its course, but this article cites several reasons why Japan may be ahead of the curve when it comes to fighting off coronavirus:
the most vulnerable demographic – 65 and older – is a very healthy one in Japan
Japan’s national health system is accessible to all and inexpensive
Senior care services are abundant and inexpensive
Japanese hospitals are experienced in detecting early and treating respiratory ailments in the elderly, and
Japanese are very hygiene conscious, and do not have customs like hand shaking and kissing
Two months after the horror show that was the Diamond Princess, the Japanese health system is handling the comparatively small number of cases coming its way.
The Farmers Market in front of the United Nations University Building in Shibuya open for business on Saturday, March 21. No ghosts here.
So while corporations across Japan have cancelled large events and large meetings, implemented policies that restrict movement and encourage work from home, there are still many people commuting to work in buses and trains.
While people in Japan are discouraged not to gather for cherry blossom viewing parties as the sakura begin to bloom this weekend, the restaurants and shopping areas are still filled with people.
Public schools all over Japan closed down a couple of weeks before the beginning of Spring Break. And yet, only several weeks later, the government is now recommending that schools re-open (assuming there are no new confirmed cases) as planned at the beginning of the new academic year in April.
To the outsider, Japan may be compared to Nero fiddling while his city burned. But so far, the numbers are not indicating a city on fire.
Yes, it is strange to live in Japan today. Surreal in fact.
I think I’ll go for a walk among the cherry trees.
In Shibuya, on March 21, people were lining up for masks (left), as well as for their favorite restaurants (right).
The Olympic rings in the sky, blowin’ in the wind.
In 1964, on Saturday, October 10, the Blue Impulse aerobatic jet team that painted the brilliantly blue sky with the Olympic rings on the opening day of the Tokyo Olympics, symbolizing then that the sky’s the limit for Japan.
In 2020, on Saturday, March 20, the Blue Impulse team reprised their role from nearly 56 years prior, sketching the five rings in the sky during the ceremony welcoming to Japan the sacred Olympic fire from Greece.
Unfortunately, the rings were immediately washed away by the blustery winds over Matsushima Air base in Miyagi prefecture, symbolizing, perhaps, that our limits are not quite so high.
I watched the officials, athletes and celebrities line up ceremoniously, undoubtedly proud to represent Japan in this extraordinary event. The Olympic flame is scheduled to start a nation-wide relay from Futaba, Fukushima on March 26 and end in Tokyo at the Opening Ceremonies of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics on July 24, perhaps at that time, showing the world that the Tokyo2020 Games are truly the “Recovery Olympics,” as the organizers have billed them.
But I couldn’t help but imagine that each and every one of them harbored the question, “Will this flame actually ignite the Olympic Cauldron on July 24?”
President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Bach, Tokyo2020 chief, Yoshiro Mori and Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe among many other officials have said that the Tokyo Olympics are going to take place as scheduled. “The I.O.C. remains fully committed to the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, and with more than four months to go before the Games there is no need for any drastic decisions at this stage,” said Bach.
The cool and patient approach of the IOC may be the right approach, but their words are beginning to seem surreal, and increasingly at odds with the heated and urgent voices of athletes and officials around the world.
“Of course the IOC and the whole world wants a successful Olympics. But for that to happen I strongly believe the event needs to be postponed – unless the authorities can guarantee it will be business as usual, which I don’t believe they can,” said Guy Learmonth on March 17, who is competing for a spot on the Great British track team.
“I’m not against the Olympics. But saying that the Olympics will still go on is a big mistake in communication,” said Giovanni Petrucci on March 19, who served as president of the Italian Olympic Committee for 14 years.
“Our athletes are under tremendous pressure, stress and anxiety, and their mental health and wellness should be among the highest priorities. It is with the burden of these serious concerns that we respectfully request that the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee advocate for the postponement of the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 by one year,” wrote USA Swimming CEO, Tim Hinchey, to the head of the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee CEO, Sarah Hirshland, on March 20.
The pressure on the local officials in Japan is immense, and we are seeing fissures in this brave front that the Games must go on. Recently two prominent Japanese voices have spoken up:
Japan is hosting the biggest, most logistically complex big-tent event in the world this year, but decisions regarding cancellation or postponement are made by the IOC. And as long as the IOC takes a wait-and-see approach, waiting to the last possible moment before making such a decision, Japanese officials believe they must do the same.
The decision that has to be made is a thankless one – there will be an outcry whether the Games go on as scheduled, are postponed or cancelled. I have no doubt that the IOC and the Tokyo2020 Olympic and Paralympic Organizing Committee are doing the best they can to make a wise decision.
In the meanwhile, the pressure continues to build, and reality continues to distort.
Wrestler and three-time gold medalist, Saori Yoshida, and judoka and three-time gold medalist Tadahiro Nomura, welcome the sacred flame to Japan.
We followed the story of the Diamond Princess as if we were binge watching a Stephen King adaptation on Netflix – with fascination and fear.
The two-week quarantine of the 3,711 passengers and crew on the British grand-class cruise ship docked at Yokohama harbor was a constant reminder to the Japanese of how close the coronavirus outbreak has come to Japanese shores. The death of two elderly passengers on board the Diamond Princess on February 20 at the end of the quarantine intensified the concern over the Japanese government’s decision to release hundreds of passengers who tested negative for the virus.
Yashiro Mori, former Japan prime minister and current president of the Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games pointed at the elephant in the room and said:
I would like to make it clear again that we are not considering a cancellation or postponement of the games. Let me make that clear.
That was February 13, just before the cases of coronavirus began to crisscross the country.
Dr. Hitoshi Oshitani, a Japanese virologist, said on February 19 that the Olympics could not take place today.
“I’m not sure [of] the situation in Japan at the end of July,” he said at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan on Wednesday, as per The Associated Press. “We need to find the best way to have a safe Olympics. Right now we don’t have an effective strategy, and I think it may be difficult to have the Olympics [now]. But by the end of July we may be in a different situation.”
Or we may not be.
We have no cure for coronavirus right now. We understand so little about the latest virus outbreak. And in the absence of clear facts, what often fills the void is doubt, speculation and fear.
Am I safe? Will a cure be found in time? Will the virus burn out as the temperature climbs?
Will the Olympics be cancelled, its sunk cost like an albatross around the necks of the country, the IOC and the massive number of organizations and businesses that have invested in these Games?
Or will the Olympics rise like a Phoenix, overcoming crisis, sending our spirits aloft?
Note: This article was written on February 22, in the midst of daily changes and updates regarding the coronavirus in Japan.
PHOTO: Typhoon Hagibis is heading north over the Pacific towards Japan’s main island. (AP: NOAA)
As I sit at home this quiet Saturday morning, Tokyo braces for the mighty hurricane Hagibis.
As Forbes claims, Hagibis could be as powerful as Hurricane Sandy, a category 2 storm that resulted in 2 billion dollars worth of damage to the East Coast of the US in 2012.
Today is October 12, 2019. For all the amateur and professional weather prognosticators who are fretting about the potential heat wave during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, to be held from July 24 to August 9, calm down.
So many have said, “Why didn’t they schedule the upcoming Olympics in October like they did in 1964?” They could have. But for financial reasons outlined in this informative New York Times article, they didn’t.
So imagine the Olympics taking place in mid-October, on a day like today. What would have happened?
Well, the organizers couldn’t have predicted that.
Exactly.
Bob Schul wins 5000 in 1964 in a cold and rainy day.
If the third day of the Olympics fell on October 12 like today, the organizers would have to cancel surfing, rowing, beach volleyball, skateboarding, shooting, archery, field hockey, softball, tennis, sailing, canoe slalom, road cycling, soccer, and equestrian dressage because they are outdoor events. But they would also likely cancel all of the indoor events as well, which include volleyball, fencing, gymnastics, table tennis, badminton, taekwando, swimming, weighlifting, baseketball, handball, judo, and diving because of the risk of harm and delay to spectators, organizers and athletes getting to and from venues.
Hurricanes aside, yes, it will likely be hot during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Most athletes and organizers will do the cost-benefit analysis in their heads, weighing their options, as they did regarding the more fearsome Zika Virus scare prior to the Rio Olympics. My guess is that even the marathoners and triathoners, who could be affected by the heat, will decide to go to Tokyo for the Olympics. I’m sure the organizers will go overboard on creating cooler environments (although I doubt they can bring down the summer water temperature of Tokyo Bay for the triathletes.)
At the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the weather was actually far from beautiful Autumn weather. The temperatures ranged from 14.6 C (58.2F) to 21.7C (71F), and was basically cool, cloudy and rainy almost every day. The road cyclists could see their breath in the hills of Hachioji, the runners in the Stadium had to run through rain and sometimes muddy conditions on certain days.
And smack dab in the middle of the Tokyo Olympics, everybody in Japan were deeply concerned about radiation poisoning. Communist China decided to detonate its first atomic bomb as a test, on October 16, 1964. The only nation to have an atomic bomb dropped on its soil, organizers and citizens alike were concerned about radiation fallout blown on the winds over the waters that separated the two countries.
Predicting the unpredictable – it’s cool if you can do it. I wouldn’t bet on it.
So for those who are sure what the weather will be like in Tokyo from July 24 to August 9 – here’s hoping you had nothing great planned outdoors today.
“2020 Tokyo Gorin – Saiaku no Shinario,” (Tokyo 2020 Worst Case Scenario), by Robert Whiting, Yuukan Fuji, March 5, 2019 – The text inside the blue box is where I am quoted.
What could go wrong at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics?
I was asked that question by best-selling author, Bob Whiting, for a weekly column he writes for the Japanese newspaper, Yūkan Fuji. My answer to him?
Anything.
And we don’t have to go too far back in time for a prime example.
It was less than three years ago when the organizers of the 2016 Rio Olympics had to endure an endless number of threats to the reputation of Brazil and the Olympics:
The Brazilian economy had tanked. Police and firemen protested at the airports they were not getting paid, warning people to stay away. There was even significant speculation that the organizers would cut air conditioning in the Olympic Village to save costs.
The largest scandal in Brazilian history filled the headlines in 2016, one that involved state-run oil company, Petrobras, in which officials received kickbacks in return for selection of specific suppliers, kickbacks that totaled some USD3 to 5 billion.
The question of whether the president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, would be impeached and removed hung over the Games like a cloud. (She was removed from office 10 days after the end of the Rio Olympics.)
The threat of catching the Zika Virus, a mosquito-borne threat to pregnant women and newborns, kept tourists and Olympians away from the Rio Olympics.
The site of the triathlon and sailing competition, Guanabara Bay, was so contaminated with human waste that it threatened the health of athletes who would compete in those waters.
In this June 1, 2015 file photo, a discarded sofa litters the shore of Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo, File)
It’s impossible for Olympic officials to control the media’s thirst for issues and scandal, but the circumstances of Brazil at the time made it easy for the press to generate negative storylines.
Will that be the case in Tokyo, when the Olympics come to town in July and August of 2020? What are the headlines that could shake Olympic officials or encourage the naysayers?
North Korea Boycotts the Olympics: The Korean teams marched together at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics in 2018, and even brought together North and South Koreans on the women’s ice hockey team. But if pressure mounts due to lack of progress in US-North Korea talks to denuclearize North Korea, who knows whether the Olympics will become an opportunity to raise the rhetoric and make North Korea’s participation a bargaining chip?
Magnitude 8.0 Earthquake Hits Tokyo – Olympics Disrupted: The timing of an earthquake just prior or during the Olympics are highly unlikely. And yet, the fear of the big one in Tokyo is in the back of the minds of many in Japan since there hasn’t been one since the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. Last year provided multiple reminders of Japan’s vulnerability to mother nature. In an annual vote of the kanji character that bests represent the year of 2018, the symbol for “disaster” was selected. After all, in 2018, 200 people were killed in flood waters across 23 prefectures, dozens perished in a 6.6 magnitude earthquake in Hokkaido, and there were at least 11 fatalities when Typhoon Jebi swept through the Kansai region.
Is there precedent? Yes. The 1989 World Series, when a magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck San Francisco just prior to the start of Game 3 match between two Bay City teams, the Oakland Athletics and the San Francisco Giants.
Officials Deny Bribery Allegations in Black Tidings Affair: A dark cloud in the distance appears to be approaching. The former president of the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF), and longtime IOC member, Lamine Diack, has been held by authorities in France since November, 2015. One of the allegations under investigation is whether Diack and his son Papa Massata Diack, were responsible for payments of USD2 million made from officials in Japan to Papa Diack through a company in Singapore called Black Tidings. It is alleged that these payments, made in July 2013, were connected to bribes that would “help the Japanese capital secure the hosting rights for the Olympic and Paralympic Games,” according to the French newspaper, Le monde. The current president of the Japan Olympic Committee, and member of the IOC, Tsunekazu Takeda, is under investigation for corruption, and may end up retiring from the Japan Olympic Committee in June or July.
Is there a precedent? Yes. A year after the end of the 2016 Rio Olympics, the head of the Rio de Janeiro Organizing Committee and member of the Brazilian men’s volleyball team at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Carlos Nuzman, was arrested for soliciting votes ahead of the 2009 IOC session to select the host city for the 2016 Summer Olympics.
Carlos Nuzman_Reuters
Make no mistake – prior to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, there will be a lot of noise, much of it negative. That’s just the reality of hosting a high budget big tent event like the Olympics.
But also, make no mistake – in the end, it is always about the athletes – their stories of struggle, fair play, excellence and achievement – that drive the headlines during the Games. Those are the headlines that will inspire millions of young Japanese, and provide the motivation that propels a select few to future Olympiads.
By the way, the last two paragraphs are what Bob quoted me on at the end of his column – after all, you can’t end a story like this with such black tidings.
The 2020 Tokyo Olympics will be great, and you won’t want to miss it!
It’s now 500 days to July 24, 2020, and the Opening Ceremonies of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics!
The National Stadium is taking shape.
Volunteers have raised their hands.
Tickets are close to going on sale.
In only 16 more months, the world will come to Japan for the XXXII Olympiad. Which made me wonder. What was it like on May 29, 1963 – when it was 500 days to go for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics? I took a look at The Japan Times for a week from May 23 to 31 to see what was top of mind in the press with 500 days to go.
First thing I noticed – no big deal was made that there were 500 days to go. But I also noticed that in addition to the significant progress on Olympic-related infrastructure, geo-political issues that were brewing in May, 1963, would come to a head 500 days later.
The facilities were taking shape: It was reported at a government meeting that “80% of the National Stadium, 20% of the track and field course, 25% of the boat course at Toda, 50% of the shooting range at Asaka, 50% of the sports center at Komazawa, and 75% of yacht harbor at Enoshima inland are completed.”
Indonesia’s Participation Under Threat: The IOC was scheduled to expel the National Organizing Committee of Indonesia, which would mean that Indonesian athletes would not be allowed to participate at the Tokyo Olympics. President Sukarno arrived in Tokyo unofficially before taking off for his planned trip to Europe, with hopes of improving the tone of Olympic discussions. This was part of an ongoing dispute over the politicization of sports, and it did not end well for Indonesia. As you can read here, the Indonesians could not get what they wanted, and boycotted the Games.
CARTOON: Indonesia Withdraws from Tokyo Olympics, Warta Bhakti- 10 October 1964, p1
JFK Thanks Hayato Ikeda for Congratulating JFK: Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda received a cable of thanks from US President John F. Kennedy, for the prime minister’s message of congratulations on the successful orbiting of an American spaceship, Faith 7, which circled the earth 22 times in mid May, piloted by a single astronaut. During the Tokyo Olympics, the Soviet Union would surprisingly top that by sending the world’s first spaceship with a crew of three – the Voskhod – during the Olympic Games.
USSR, USA and Cuba: Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev threatened that things could get worse than the Cuban Missile crisis of the year before if the United States did not cease in interfering in Cuban affairs. Little did Khruschev know that he would be ousted from power a bit over 500 days later.
New York Times, October 16, 1964
Nuclear Tests: The Japanese government decided in May of 1963 to cease its protests against American underground testing of nuclear explosives, after one such test took place in mid May in Nevada. The Japanese government finally realized that simply protesting the US government to change its behavior was not working. They didn’t realize that about 508 days later they would have to protest China’s decision to test its first atomic bomb, which they did on October 16, 1964, six days into the Tokyo Games.
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