Category Archive: Tokyo 1964

Japan Falls in Love with the Brave Blossoms: Shades of the Women’s Volleyball Team at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics

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The women’s volleyball team victorious, from the book “Bi to Chikara”

The Japanese were buying televisions, this magical device that brought the world into their homes. And with the Tokyo Olympics arriving in October, 1964, sales for color television were soaring like their pride in hosting the Olympics.

The Tokyo Games had a massive impact on the psyche of the Japanese – no event in the history of Japan was viewed as much by as many people. Reports of television ratings in Japan vary wildly depending on the source. One source explains that over 75 million people watched some part of the Olympics over the two-week period, for a rating of 97.3%. That’s amazing since the population in Japan at the time was about 100 million.

Another source explains that three of the four highest rated programs in Japan in 1964 were related to the Olympics:

  1. 15th NHK Red and White Song Battle (NHK General, December 31) 72.0%
  2. Tokyo Olympic and Volleyball Women’s Final “Japan vs Soviet Union” (NHK General, October 23) 66.8%
  3. Tokyo Olympics Closing Ceremony (NHK General, October 24, 16: 52-18: 20) 63.2%
  4. Tokyo Olympics Opening Ceremony (NHK General, October 10 13: 43-15: 20) 61.2%

But I suspect this list from Wikipedia is misleading as it focuses on ratings for one channel. The number one program, the annual new year’s eve programming (Red and White Song Battle) was broadcast only on NHK. But the Tokyo Olympics, on the whole, was broadcasted on multiple channels, sometimes up to five channels covering the same event. That was the case for the Opening and Closing ceremonies, as well as the highest rated event during the Olympics – the women’s volleyball final – when the Japanese defeated the Soviet Union to win gold.

Japan Television Program_Volleyball_October 23
Japan Television Program on October 23, 1964

One can say, with little exaggeration, that nearly everyone in Japan was watching that match.

Think about that – when was the last time an entire nation’s eyes were watching the same exact thing, united in their attention and feelings? In recent years, I can think of only moments of disaster and distress: 9.11 in the US or 3.11 in Japan.

In terms of uplifting moments, never was Japan more united, or prouder, than at 9 pm on October 23, 1964, when the final point sealed the victory for the Witches of the Orient, as the women’s basketball team was affectionately called.

I must admit. I believe I felt a bit of that unity and pride 55 years later, in September and October 2019. The Rugby World Cup is currently being held for the first time in Asia, and the host country, Japan has the only Asian representative in the tournament.

Rugby Fans go wild after Japan defeats Ireland_Kyodo
Japan supporters at a public viewing site in Tokyo celebrate after Kenki Fukuoka scored a try. Photo: Kyodo

Japan kicked off the tournament on September 20, 2019, defeating Russia 30-10. The television rating was 18.3%, attracting a peak of 26 million viewers. On September 28, Japan pulled off an upset, upending Ireland 19-12, igniting celebrations across the country, and sending ratings higher with 29.5 million viewers. As excitement and expectations noticeably grew among casual and non-rugby fans, viewers of the Japan-Samoa match on October 5 climbed to 47 million.

With three wins in hand during the tournament pool plan, a Japan victory against Scotland would send Japan into the Top 8 for the first time. Nervous but hopeful, over 54 million people were tuned into to watch, attracting a peak rating of 53.7% at the end of the match, when Japan realized their dream of advancement into the elimination round.

Alas, the Brave Blossoms could not survive the South African python that squeezed the life out of the Japanese ruggers. Ratings during the course of the match suffered as viewers realized that the impossible dream was indeed just a dream.

But the dream is the thing. Japan was living a dream vicariously through the incredible energy and surprising skill of the Brave Blossoms – these upstarts turned world beaters.

Is the 2019 Rugby World Cup a sign of things to come? Will the 2020 Tokyo Olympics raise expectations of triumph and pride? Will Japanese heroes emerge to capture the imagination of children and adults across the nation? Will the Olympics unite Japan in a way that exceeds the unity inspired by the Japanese ruggers?

There is little doubt in my mind – the Tokyo 2020 Olympics will bring the nation together.

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To Defect or Not to Defect—That Was the Question for Hungarian Canoeist Andras Toro at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics

Andras Toro defecting headline_Seattle Daily Times.JPG
Andras Toro is wearing the hat.

An excerpt from the book, 1964: The Greatest Year in the History of Japan – How the Tokyo Olympics Symbolized Japan’s Miraculous Rise from the Ashes

 

At the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the kayakers and canoeists landed at Haneda Airport like most other Olympians, but then were whisked off to Sagamihara, about sixty kilometers west of Tokyo. The competitions for the canoeists and kayakers were to be held at Lake Sagami, a man-made reservoir in an idyllic setting developed for tourists.

To Andras Toro, it was dreamlike:

Lake Sagami was a magical place with all the oriental beauty we had only seen before in magazines…the morning mist that rose along the shoreline was beautifully surreal.

It was the perfect setting for Cold War intrigue.

Since the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, Toro and his friends in the Honved Canoe Club in Budapest had given serious thought to defecting from their country, as long as it was under the hammer (and sickle) of the Soviet Union. In fact, many of his friends did indeed defect, taking advantage of their participation at the 1956 Melbourne Games.

But Toro didn’t go to Melbourne. And his bronze medal finish at the 1960 Rome Olympics only fanned the flames of his desire to win in Tokyo. Competing in the individual 1,000-meter event, Toro had his sights set on the gold. But he also smelled an opportunity—that if he did not win a medal, he would seriously consider defecting to the West.

Just saying that you want to defect, however, doesn’t make it happen. There is no defector’s manual. Who do you contact? What country would take you? How do you avoid the ears and eyes of your country’s minders? Toro spoke almost no English. Who would he even start this conversation with?

And yet, when you want something, as Paulo Coelho famously put it in his novel, The Alchemist, “all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

Off the foggy banks of Lake Sagami, the universe began to conspire for Andras Toro.

Andras Toro at Lake Sagami
Andras Toro at Lake Sagami, courtesy of Andras Toro

In the tiny community of Olympic canoeists and kayakers emerged quite unexpectedly a friend of Toro’s, Andor Elbert. Friends since their teenage years in the Honved Canoe Club in Budapest, Elbert had defected to Canada eight years prior, and was representing Canada at the 1964 Olympics. Toro, shielded behind his Hungarian minders, was of course never informed that a defector had made the Olympic squad on another nation’s team.

Then an American kayaker named Bill Smoke entered the picture. He was at Lake Sagami to compete for the US Olympic squad, but he was also looking for talent. Smoke lived in Michigan, famous for its lakes and love of boating of all kinds, and he hoped to find someone who could build canoes and kayaks so that he could start a business back home.

Smoke walked over to the Canadian dorms looking for someone who spoke English and happened to have that conversation with Elbert. Smoke wondered if Elbert knew anyone in Canada who might be willing to help him out. As a matter of fact, Elbert did know someone, but he wasn’t from Canada.

Elbert told Smoke that his friend Toro was not only good at designing and building boats, he was also hoping to defect from Hungary. Smoke in turn talked with US teammate and then-girlfriend, Marcia Jones, who was in Japan also competing in individual canoeing. She turned out to be a key connection, as her mother was Mary Francis, an attorney, one of two women to graduate from the University of Michigan Law School in 1929. She was also sympathetic to people who had to leave their home countries.

Jones said that when she was ten, they had a DP, or displaced person, couple from Latvia stay with them. “The government brought them over here,” she said. “My mother sponsored them. They lived at our place. They went to our schools. She wanted to help them out. She was a very generous person and we could afford to help them.”

When Jones told her mother about Toro, Mary Francis got to work, contacting the US Embassy in Tokyo to seek their help. According to Smoke, who eventually married Jones, his future mother-in-law was not someone you could say no to easily. Francis was able to set up a meeting for Toro at the Embassy.

So very suddenly, all of the pieces fell into place. Toro was ready to defect, resigned to most likely never seeing his family and home country ever again, but with hopes of starting anew in a new land. All that remained, strangely enough, was for him to lose.

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Seiko—Seizing the Moment, Making a Difference as Official Timer at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics

Seiko Type III Timing Printer
Seiko Timing Printer

An excerpt from the book, 1964: The Greatest Year in the History of Japan – How the Tokyo Olympics Symbolized Japan’s Miraculous Rise from the Ashes

In 1959, when Tokyo was awarded the XVIII Olympiad by the IOC, Seiko’s President, Shoji Hattori, was determined to make Seiko the official timer of the Olympic Games. In 1960, he sent a telegram to one of his watch design section managers, Saburo Inoue, with instructions that would forever change the fate of the Japanese watch company—”Intend to handle official timing duties. Go to Rome Olympics in August and observe timing procedures.”

Inoue was deeply skeptical of the idea, and for good reason. “I’d never seen timing devices for the Olympics,” he said. “I didn’t know how they used their stopwatches, or what types they would need. We couldn’t do computer simulations, so we had to work out every single thing by trial and error.”

But again, as explained in the 2012 The Daily Telegraph article, ignorance proved to be bliss.

In those days, it was the prerogative of the local organizing committee to select the company that would supply the timers, and it was likely they would choose the tried-and-true Swiss watchmakers—Omega or Longines. Up till then, they were the only firms trusted with ensuring accurate times in Olympic competition.

In contrast, Seiko’s experience in building timers specifically for sports was zero. Such was the confidence of Hattori and Japan at the time—that anything was possible if they tried.

Without assurance of a contract for the Olympics, Hattori asked his three group companies to work on Olympic-related projects: large clocks, stopwatches, crystal chronometers, and a new idea, a device that could print the times of competitors right after the end of a race. They were called printing timers, and this revolutionized the way results of competitions were determined.

In only two years, Seiko was producing sports stopwatches that passed the standards of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) Technical Committee. In a track and field competition in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, the IAAF was witness to a successful test, as the Japanese-made stopwatches proved accurate and reliable.

Seiko had already successfully developed quartz technology for small watches, and used this crystal technology for long distance races, like the marathon among others. Developing this quartz technology was key to developing Seiko wristwatches of the future that would stay accurate over longer periods of time.

More significantly, perhaps for the athletes, was Seiko’s development of the printing timer, a machine that would electronically time and print the results of an event, up to 1/100 of a second for track events.

This machine had a significant impact on a high-visibility competition at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics—the women’s 80-meter hurdles final.

On October 19, at the National Stadium, Karin Balzer of Germany and Teresa Cieply of Poland settled into their starting blocks. When the pistol shot rang, an electric signal was sent via wire to a printing timer, as well as a signal to a camera that would take special photo finish pictures, and a signal to a large spectator clock that set the second-hand in motion.

Karin Balzer wins 80 meter hurdle
Karin Balzer of Germany (3rd from right) and Teresa Cieply of Poland (169); from the German book “Olympia 1964 Tokio,” by Maegerlein, Heinz

In a stunning finish, Balzer, Cieply, and Australian Pam Kilborn hit the tape seemingly in a dead heat, all three timed by officials at 10.5 seconds. Despite numerous officials with hand stopwatches that measured in tenths of seconds, officials could not determine a winner.

The officials preferred not to hand out three gold medals, and fortunately, had a fallback plan—the latest timing technology from Japan.

When the runners arrived at the goal, a picture was taken by a slit camera, manufactured by Japan Photo Finish Co. Ltd. After thirty seconds, the image’s negative was transmitted as a reflected image, and converted in three minutes to a positive print. The information from Seiko’s printing timer was integrated into an image noting times in hundredths of seconds. The photo would show not only the athletes, but time, and thus the order in which they finished.

Thanks to the printing timer, it was revealed that Balzer completed the race in 10.54 seconds, 0.01 seconds ahead of Cieply, who was also only 0.01 seconds ahead of Kilborn. While the IAAF officially recognized times to the tenth of a second, in this case, they accepted the recorded electronic time to the hundredth.

The printing timer contributed mightily to the evolution of timed sports, and led to the creation of the famed, global printing company—EPSON—its name a simple mash-up of the words “son of electronic printer.”

1964 was Seiko’s time.

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Two Seminal Songs of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics: “Konnichi wa Akachan,” and “Ue o Muite, Arukou”

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Chiharu Ts’baki and Steve Myers rehearsng for my book launch party!

It was October 10, 1964 – a bright and beautiful Autumn day.

After years of hard work, years of worry, years of questioning whether the world would embrace Japan after the turmoil of world war, the Tokyo Olympics had finally arrived.

To the world, Japan was radiant, fresh-faced, smiling from ear to ear, looking at the world with eyes wide open, like a baby, looking at her beautiful mother for the first time.

The feeling at that time was reflected in the song, “Konnichiwa Akachan” (こんにちは赤ちゃん) , sung by Michiyo Azusa. This popular tune was released in 1963, but Japanese would still hear it on the radio and the TV constantly throughout 1964 as it captured the spirit of the time – optimism for a bright future!

Below is the singer, Chiharu Ts’baki and the guitarist Steve Myers, performing “Konnichi was Akachan” (which means “Hello, My Baby!”) at my book launch party on October 10, 2019, the 55th anniversary of the 1964 Tokyo Summer Games.

The sense of optimism at the time was powerful, as Japanese adults who made the Olympics possible, and who cheered on and welcomed athletes from all visiting nations, were alive at the end of the Pacific War, when all they and their families knew was poverty, homelessness, hunger, and disease, at least for those in the burned out rubble-strewn cities of Japan.

The Japanese rebuilt the nation and were rightly proud to bring to the world the most logistically demanding global event of its time. And on that beautiful Autumn day on October 10, never was the nation prouder. Japan was akin to a newly born baby, smiling into the eyes of her mother, as in the song.

The person who wrote the lyrics to “Konnichiwa Akachan” was Rokusuke Ei. He also wrote the lyrics to a 1961 song that was very popular during the Olympics, not only to the Japanese, but also to foreigners visiting the country. The song was sung in Japanese, and still sold over 13 million copies worldwide, hitting number 1 on the pop charts in the US, Canada and Australia.

This song was known in Japan as “Ue o Muite Arukou,”(上を向いて歩こう) and its catchy melody made singer Sakamoto Kyu a global star, and made Japan relevant to the world. To the rest of the world, it was known as “Sukiyaki,” the idea of a British music promoter who thought that the Japanese dish would make more sense to the Western world. You can’t argue with success.

If you understand the lyrics,“Ue o Muite Arukou” sounds like a love song, or one of unrequited love. But Rokusuke Ei wrote not about love, but about defeat.

Ei participated in the anti-government protests against Japan’s signing of the Mutual Treaty of Cooperation and Security with America. And after the government signed the treaty, American soldiers and military bases were allowed to remain in the country. Ei was sad, and wrote that famous song, reflecting a more complex relationship Japan had with the West, particularly the United States.

While anti-government protests were happening in Japan in the early 1960s and around the world, they were gaining real force in the late 1960s. In fact, the 1968 Mexico City Olympics were scarred by the killing of dozens if not hundreds of students during an anti-government protest by government forces, only 10 days prior to the start of those Games.

If the Olympics came to Tokyo in 1968, it’s likely that the clamor of anti-government protests in Japan would have created tension if not trouble during the Games.

If the Games came to Tokyo in 1960, it’s likely that the Japanese economy in the 1950s, while accelerating, would not have been robust enough to support the organization of the Games for the summer of 1960.

In other words, 1964 was the perfect time, the right time. And after the successful completion of the 1964 Olympics, they were often called the Happy Games, and in retrospect, the Last innocent Games.

Two of Rokusuke Ei’s most popular songs captured the mood of the time, and are, in my mind, intertwined with the joy and wonder the Japanese had for the XVIII Olympiad in Tokyo.

Here again are Chiharu Nacitas and Steve Myers with their beautiful rendition of “Ue o Muite, Arukou.”

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Calling All Weather Forecasters In Us All – Cool It: Hagibis and the Cruel World of Predicting the Unpredictable

Hagibis
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?

The 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan is a test case. The organizers for the 2-month tournament, which has been very well received in Japan, selling out stadiums across the nation, have cancelled (not postponed) two matches between New Zealand and Italy, and between England and France due to the threat of Hagibis.

Well, the organizers couldn’t have predicted that.

Exactly.

Bob Schul wins 5000 in 1964
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.

Atomic Bomb Japan Times_Oct 17 1964

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.

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Honoring Japanese Gymnast Legend Masao Takemoto

Masao Takemoto at front of line in 1960
Pictures shared of Takemoto – he’s at the front of the line in the team picture.

Sunday, September 29, 2019 was gymnastics legend, Masao Takemoto‘s birthday. Had the three-time Olympian been alive, he would have turned 100 that day.

So many of Japan’s gymnastics greats attended this event, including:

  • Shuji Tsurumi, two time Olympian and winner of 6 medals, including three silver medals at the ’64 Olympics to go with his team gold
  • Haruhiro Yamashita, Tsurumi’s teammate on the 1964 team and winner of two medals, including gold in individual vault
  • Toshiko Shirasu Aihara, two-time Olympian and 1964 women’s team bronze medalist
  • Gingko Abukawa-Chiba, two-time Olympian and 1964 women’s team bronze medalist
  • Koji Gushiken, 5-time medalist at the 1984 Olympics, including men’s individual all around
Shuji Tsurumi, Gingko Abukawa Chiba and Toshiko Shirasu Aihara
Shuji Tsurumi, Gingko Abukawa Chiba and Toshiko Shirasu Aihara

Takemoto was an inspiration to them all. Appearing at the 1952, 1956 and 1960 Olympics, Takemoto amassed 7 medals, and 7 medals in World Championships in 1954 and 1958, helping the Japan team to a team silver medal at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. When he finished his Olympic career, helping his team to the gold medal at the 1960 Rome Olympics, he helped ignite a 16-year stretch of absolute dominance for Japanese men’s gymnastics, as Team Japan took gold from Rome in 1960 to Montreal in 1976.

Legends at Takemoto Party
Legends at Takemoto Party

And he won that gold medal at the age of 41.

Japanese American gymnast, Makoto Sakamoto was a 13-year old in Los Angeles, after moving there from Tokyo, when Japan won their first team gold in Rome. Sakamoto, who was in Tokyo and attended the 100th anniversary of Takemoto’s birthday, told the attendees that he and his older brother had a copy of Takemoto’s book on gymnastics, and that they read every page and followed every line in the book like it was gospel.

Aihara and Sakamoto
Toshiko Shirasu-Aihara and Makoto Sakamoto

Sakamoto would go on to make the American men’s gymnastics team and compete at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, as well as serve as assistant coach to Team USA men’s gymnastics team that won gold at home in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

Tsurumi and Yamashita_Takemotos party
The author convinces two legends of ’64, Tsurumi and Yamashita, to advertise the book.
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The Dramatic Transformation of Tokyo Bay: Over One Third of All 2020 Olympic Venues Sit on Landfill

Trash Island Talk_Kietlinski_1
Associate Professor Robin Kietlinski

It’s amazing to think – over one third of all 44 venues for the upcoming 2020 Tokyo Olympics are in the Tokyo Bay, landfill property developed over centuries, but particularly over the past 100 years.

According to Associate Professor Robin Kietlinski of LaGuardia Community College of the City University of New York, 16 venues for the Olympics will be held in what had been previously the open waters of Tokyo Bay.

In a talk Dr. Kietlinski gave on Friday, September 27, 2019, at the newly opened Japan campus of Temple University, she explained how the physical landmass of Tokyo along the Western edges of Tokyo Bay began to grow when Edo was established in the early 17th century as the de facto capital of Japan during the Tokugawa shogunate. But in the aftermath of the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, and the firebombings of Tokyo during World War II, rubble was poured into the western and northern shores of Tokyo Bay.

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A slide from Associate Professor Robin Kietlinski’s presentation showing the transformation of Tokyo Bay over the centuries.

Around the time of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, when the engine of the Japanese economic miracle was really beginning to rev, the waste produced by the tremendous growth in population, industry and consumerism was growing faster than they could manage it. Tokyo waterways were polluted and odorous. The landfill in Tokyo Bay became the dumping grounds of Tokyo, and ran rampant with rodents and flies. As I wrote in this blog post on Yumenoshima, site of Olympic archery next year, the Self Defense Forces had to be called into exterminate the fly infestation.

Today, as Dr. Kietlinski explained, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government has built waste processing plants that pulverize and incinerate waste. All of the incinerator ash is then used for landfill in Tokyo Bay, continuing plans to increase the terrestrial space in the bay, according to this explanation of waste management from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.

Infinity Heritage and Tokyo Bay Area Zones

Here is a list of all of the venues, including the Olympic Village, that sit in the middle of Tokyo Bay. You can see get more information on the Olympic venues here.

  • Aomi Urban Sports Park – 3×3 basketball, sport climbing
  • Ariake Arena – volleyball
  • Ariake Gymnastics Center -gymnastics
  • Ariake Tennis Park – tennis
  • Ariake Urban Sports Park – BMX, skateboarding
  • IBC/MPC (International Broadcast Center/Main Press Center)
  • Kasai Canoe Slalom Center – canoe (slalom)
  • Odaiba Marine Park – marathon swimming, triathlon
  • Oi Hockey Stadium – field hockey
  • Olympic Village
  • Tatsumi Water Polo Center – water polo
  • Tokyo Aquatics Center – swimming, diving, synchronized swimming
  • Sea Forest Cross-Country Course – equestrian
  • Sea Forest Waterway – canoe (sprint) and rowing
  • Shiokaze Park – beach volleyball
  • Yumenoshima Park Archery Field – archery
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British Distance Runner Basil Heatley Passes Away: The Reluctant Marathoner Who Snatched Silver at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics

Basil-Heatley-Abebe-Bikila-Kokichi-Tsuburaya
Basil Heatley, Abebe Bikila, Kokichi-Tsuburaya

Basil Heatley, who streaked to silver in the marathon at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, passed away on Saturday, August 3, 2019. He was 85.

The gold medal in that marathon went to Abebe Bikila, who simply outclassed the field of 78 to become the first to win two straight Olympic championships in the marathon. At the halfway point, Heatley was 12th, laboring in the high humidity of the Tokyo air and with a cramp in his rib cage. He  thought his careful pace may have lost him the race, but he built up his speed and overtook his competition one by one, setting up a most dramatic Olympic marathon finish.

After Abebe finished in world record time in 2:12:12, the 70,000 spectators bubbled like water ready to boil over as Japanese Kokichi Tsuburaya entered the National Stadium. No Japanese had medaled in athletics and the crowd was anticipating a silver medal in this marquis event the day before the end of a very successful Olympics in Tokyo.

And yet, the unassuming Heatley entered the stadium and doused the flame, as I described in my book 1964: The Greatest Year in the History of Japan.

And yet, soon after Tsuburaya entered the stadium, so, too, did Heatley, only seconds behind. The Brit knew this was his chance. “Fifteen years of racing told me that, at that moment, an injection of pace was necessary, and possible, to overtake the runner in front of me,” he said. Just before the final curve of the stadium’s cinder track, Heatley turned on the jets and sprinted by his rival. For a battle that took over two hours and sixteen minutes, Tsuburaya lost his chance for silver by four seconds.

(Watch above video from 2 minute 12 second mark to see end of marathon.)

I never met Heatley face to face, nor talk with him, but I did have the honor to exchange emails with his wife Gill who transcribed Heatley’s answers for me. I learned that he was a reluctant marathoner, and the 1964 Olympics was only his sixth marathon ever. Heatley liked to run on the track, 1 milers to 6 milers, up to 10k, as well as 12k cross country races.

After winning the 1956 Midlands Marathon, his first ever marathon, he felt that marathons were not only punishing, they were cruel. “…when I looked round the dressing room and saw everyone in an awful state, I remember saying that if we were four-legged, the RSPCA (Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) would ban the Marathon.”

And yet, Heatley realized that he was not fast enough for the shorter distances if he wanted to compete at the Tokyo Olympics. He realized that he had the fortitude and discipline to excel at the marathon and focused his energy there. He told me that he would run to and from work, and compete in a race every Saturday, running some 100-120 miles per week, the equivalent of four to five marathons a week.

With qualification for the Tokyo Olympics on the line, Heatley entered the Polytechnic Marathon in June, 1964, and set the world record with a time of 2:13:55.

Despite his success, Heatley told me that he did not like the marathon. And yet, he felt his track experience was critical for his success in the 26-mile race.

I did not like the marathon.  Perhaps I was more than a little scared of it.  Especially after so many years of racing 1-6 miles.  I think that my regime of fast road running was in fact better marathon training than it was for 10km on the track for which I was doing it.  Looking back, I can see that Tsuburaya ran himself to a standstill.  Had the race ben 25 miles he would have been second.  Had it been 27 miles he maybe would not have finished, and for that I salute him.

Heatley was not one to boast or play to the crowd. He was famous for avoiding the press, and he told me that he got little satisfaction winning Olympic silver, and had no intent to run again in Mexico City as Tsuburaya famously promised.

Any feeling of elation was tempered by both my own tiredness and the knowledge that Bikila had beaten us all by over 4 minutes. On the medal stand I was confused.  How do you celebrate a second place if you are so far behind the winner? I never wanted to go to run a distance race in Mexico City.  Simply – altitude.

But he was proud to have represented Team GB in 1964, which he said was one of the best Olympic squads in his nation’s history.

“We had been a very successful team,” he said in the video interview below. “In 64, I still regard that we were the best British team to leave these shores.”

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We Have Lift Off: “1964 The Greatest Year in the History of Japan” Launches!

My book on the 1964 Tokyo Olympics is now available. And through July 31, you can buy the Kindle (ebook) version for 99 cents, or the equivalent in your region. I don’t mind if you buy the paperback version or even the hard cover if it is available on your Amazon site. Note, if you buy a Kindle version, please be careful that you are buying from the Amazon store your Kindle is registered.  Click here to buy the book, and understand why I entitled it:

1964

The Greatest Year in the History of Japan

How The Tokyo Olympics Symbolized Japan’s Miraculous Rise from the Ashes

Final Book Cover-LOCK

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Dreams of Carrying an Olympic Torch in Fukushima: My Quest to Honor the Legacy of Family Past

Roy at the Ancestral Home 1
Roy at his ancestral home by the sea – Murakami, Odaka-ku, Fukushima, 20 kilometers north of Fukushima Dai Ichi Nuclear Power Plant.
日本語は英語の後に続きます。

I see myself running, carrying a torch.

I see myself, two weeks ago, running past untended rice fields in Odaka-ku, Fukushima, other rice fields covered with solar panels, piles of black bags stacked with radioactive soil, and 20-meter high barriers to protect the land from the massive power of the sea – legacies of 3.11.

Solar Panels Over Rice Fields 7
Solar panels growing on rice fields near my ancestral home in Fukushima.

I see myself, 30 years ago in the hot August sun running past the Shiga Barber Shop in Odaka-machi, vast swaths of verdant rice fields, the tombstones of my ancestors on my right and the Pacific Ocean just meters away, when I first discover the land of my ancestors.

Tomizawa Plot2
The tombstones of the Tomizawas in 1989 in Murakami, Odaka, Fukushima, being tended to Takashi Shiga, the grandson of Kiyo Tomizawa.

I see myself, 130 years ago, running past the old Tomizawa home in Murakami, Soma-gun, Seiga Tomizawa, showing a young Kiyoshi Tomizawa, my grandfather, how to ride a horse, while holding a bow and shooting an arrow true.

*****

As thousands will carry a torch throughout Japan in the Olympic torch relay from March 26 to July 24 as a run-up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, I hope to carry one as well. I hope to carry a torch on the first day of the nationwide relay which starts in Naraha, Fukushima before ending the day in Minami Soma, Fukushima.

In between Naraha and Minami Soma, about 13 kilometers south of the relay’s end point for the day is my ancestral home of Odaka, where I’d like to run, and carry a torch. Just as the Olympic torch is ignited in Athens Greece to symbolize the Olympic flame’s connection to its ancestral roots, I want my Olympic torch to be ignited in Fukushima to symbolize the connection to my ancestral roots.

If not for my grandfather, Kiyoshi Tomizawa, the dozens of descendants of the Tomizawa’s in America would not exist.

My grandfather was born into a samurai family. His grandfather had the imposing name of Tomizawa Hachirozaemon Minamoto no Takakiyo. My grandfather’s father was the Soma Clan minister of religion. But after the Meiji Restoration, when the Emperor was restored as the symbolic center of power in Japan, the Meiji rulers centralized control over the domains previously ruled by the samurai daimyos.

The Tomizawas from Seiga to Kiyoshi

As I understand it from my Aunt Hiroko (whom I knew as Auntie Grace), the Tomizawa’s no longer had the financial stability they had enjoyed under the Tokugawa Shogunate. So in 1890, the Tomizawa patriarch at the time, Seiga Tomizawa, decided to send two of his three children off for adoption: my grandfather Kiyoshi off to the Kataoka family, and his younger sister, Kiyo, off to the Miura family. (Kiyo would go on to marry Chozo Shiga, who established the oldest barber shop in Odaka.)

Chozo and Kiyo
Chozo and Kiyo Shiga, who opened the first barber shop in Odaka. Kiyo was my grandfather’s younger sister.

According to my aunt, Kiyoshi was unhappy in the Kataoka household, and she remembered being told that, after a while, Kiyoshi was no longer living with the Kataoka’s, and that his brother would leave food and clothes for Kiyoshi wherever he was staying. The records show that Kiyoshi formally returned to the Tomizawa household in 1897.

A year later, Kiyoshi enrolled at Tohoku Gakuin University in Sendai, where he met a man named Dr. John Mott, who was on a two-year world tour as a part of an organization he co-founded in 1895 called the World Student Christian Federation. Sometime during that two-year trip, Dr. Mott was in Japan and visited Tohoku Gakuin University.

Dr. Mott, who would go on to become the 1946 Nobel Peace Prize winner for his work with the YMCA, clearly inspired my grandfather. Kiyoshi decided to move to the United States, first studying English at the Seisoku English Language School in Tokyo, and then borrowing money from his uncle so he could take a long boat ride to America.

Kiyoshi and Fumi_1960s maybe
My grandparents, Kiyoshi and Fumi, in the early 1960s.

My grandfather established residence in San Francisco in 1903. After working odd jobs and building his English capability, he enrolled in Miami University of Ohio, graduating in 1912. Six years later, he became the first executive director of the Japanese YMCA in San Francisco.

With a dream to build a permanent home for the Japanese YMCA, Kiyoshi travailed through 12 years of anguish raising funds in Japan and America, during the Great Depression, to build a stand-alone and wholly owned YMCA building for Japanese in San Francisco. And Kiyoshi prevailed. The Japanese Y was finally opened on January 12, 1936. That YMCA, one of my grandfather’s legacies, is now called the Buchanan YMCA, and still contributes to the J-Town community in San Francisco.

Soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Japanese YMCA was taken over by the American government, and the process of incarcerating over 100,000 Japanese into internment camps began. My grandfather, a Japanese is-sei thoroughly investigated by the FBI, was offered, quite fortunately, the opportunity to serve as a Japanese instructor for the Naval School of Oriental Languages in Boulder, Colorado, where such famous translators as Edward Seidensticker and Donald Keene studied during the war. My grandfather wisely took the offer and taught officers Japanese writing. The alternative was imprisonment in an internment camp for the entire family.

Class at Naval Oriental Language School_Kiyoshi center
Class at Naval Oriental Language School_Kiyoshi Tomizawa third person standing from the left

Thanks to the work ethic of my grandparents, my father, Thomas, who attended Boulder High School, went on to get his Masters in Journalism at Northwestern University, wrote for the American military paper, the Pacific Stars and Stripes, in Tokyo from 1957-58, and eventually joined NBC News, where he was on the news team that broadcasted the 1964 Tokyo Olympics back to the US. On October 10, 1964, when I turned 1 in New York City, my father was in Tokyo helping to broadcast the opening ceremonies of the Tokyo Olympics. My father went on to become a three-time Emmy Award winning news producer with NBC.

Same Mud #2 Frank McGee and Daddy
My father, Thomas, with NBC reporter, Frank McGee, in Vietnam during filming of 1967 documentary entitled, Same Mud, Same Blood.

Fifty-five years later, I am, in some small way through my book, hoping to honor the legacy of my lineage, which goes all the way back to Fukushima in the Edo Period.

On March 26, 2020, I hope to honor that legacy again.

I see myself running, carrying a torch, across the land of my ancestors…

…for my family

…for the ties that bind my homes, the United States and Japan, and

…for Japan and the resilience and values of its people.

Roy with 1964 Tokyo Olympic Torch
Roy with 1964 Tokyo Olympic Torch

 

福島でオリンピック聖火を掲げて走るという夢：私の一族が残した遺産を讃える旅

 

聖火を掲げて走る私が見える。

 1か月前、3.11が遺した福島県小高区の荒れた水田、ソーラーパネルで覆われた水田、放射能汚染土が詰まった黒い袋が積み上げられた水田、海の巨大な力からこの地を守る高さ20メートルの防波堤の横を走る私が見える。

 30年前、8月の暑い太陽のもと、小高町の志賀理髪店、青々とした広い水田の横を走る私が見える。右手には先祖の墓が、ほんの20メートル先には太平洋が見える。この時初めて私は先祖たちがいた土地を見つけたのだ。

 130年前、相馬郡村上の冨沢家の古い屋敷の横を走り抜ける私が見える。冨沢清賀が私の祖父である若き冨沢清に、馬上で弓をつがえ的に命中させる術を教えている。

*****

3月26日から7月24日にかけて2020年東京オリンピックの聖火リレーが行われ、数千人もの人が聖火を掲げて日本の地を走ります。私もぜひこれに参加し、全国を巡るリレーの初日、福島県楢葉町からスタートし同県南相馬市までを走る初日に聖火を運びたいと思います。

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