Thomas Tomizawa in Tokyo, October, 1964

The opening ceremony was fantastic! Spectacular! The reception was extremely good and clear. The pictures are very sharp all the way through, unbelievable! – letter from Sayoko to Thomas Tomizawa on October 10, 1964

The above reviewer, my mother, was clearly biased. Sayoko was a Japanese native of Tochigi who met a 2nd generation Japanese-American named Thomas in Tokyo in 1958, got married, and moved to the United States. Thomas was in Tokyo during the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, working for NBC News, which broadcasted the Summer Games to America.

Letter from Sayoko to Thomas Tomizawa on October 10, 1964

In another letter a week later, my mother wrote to my father, “I have seen the Olympic show tonight 5~7 pm. I see your name every other day. Miura-san’s sister’s friends are watching the show every night. Yoko-san said ‘Tomizawa-san no go-shujin no namae ga deruwa yo!’ (Tomizawa-san’s name is coming up on the credits!)”

My mother, who passed away in May of this year, wrote several letters to her husband while he was working in Tokyo. She wrote about the errands she ran: buying replacement light bulbs for the refrigerator at Woolworths, setting a dentist’s appointment for her 5-year-old, Mike, picking up the daily newspaper for her husband, paying the phone bill.

She worried about an ongoing school bus strike that was inconveniencing all the parents. She complained that Mike’s teacher was giving too much candy to the kids. And she bemoaned the fact that her son, Roy, was crying so often she couldn’t take any decent pictures to send her husband.

Sayoko and her two sons: Roy and Mike, circa 1964

I had turned one years old at the start of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. And while I had no idea what the Olympics were then, I have a pretty good idea now. (See book.)

 

Compare and Contrast

1964 Tokyo Olympics.

2020 Tokyo Olympics.

They could have been, should have been so similar an experience: celebrations on a global scale that brought the world together and warmed the spirit. Indeed, in 2019, Tokyo2020 was gearing up to be the greatest Olympics ever.

But alas, the COVID-19 pandemic changed the course of history. The Olympics of 1964 and 2020 could not have been more different.

If 1964 were a song, it was “Joy to the World.” 2020 was “Ain’t No Sunshine.”

If 1964 were a film, it was “Rocky.” 2020 was “I, Tonya.”

If 1964 were a French dessert, it was a splendid Millefeuille with airy, flaky layers sandwiching luscious cream and fresh strawberries. 2020 was a deflated Soufflé.

 

Dreams Unfulfilled

It was this time 7 years ago when I started researching the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

My vision was clear: write the definitive book in English on a defining moment in modern Japanese history, meet amazing people, be a talking head during Tokyo2020, and have total access to the Games.

My dream was vivid: sit in the stands with Olympians I interviewed, watching the 2020 Olympics and reminiscing about the 1964 Olympics.

Much of my vision was realized. My dream was not.

COVID-19 was simply a hurdle too high. With over 5 million deaths globally, and unfathomable heartbreak, the pandemic made a mockery of our pre-COVID priorities.

Had the 2020 Summer Olympics and Paralympics been scheduled for Rio or Paris or LA, I believe the Games would have been cancelled: local political will would have wilted in the tired face of surging infection and death rates.

 

The Games Must Go On

Japan was different.

There were no lock downs in Japan. In fact, in the months from May to June of this year, infection rates in Tokyo were decreasing as athlete training was accelerating. There were great expectations that Japan would live up to its reputation as a “safe pair of hands,” hands that would ensure the health, safety and fair competition for athletes from around the world.

And under those tremulous conditions, the Government of Japan and the organizers summoned up enough political will to continue to say, “the show must go on.”

The Olympics and Paralympics, after a year’s postponement, did take place. The greatest compromise the organizers made with the circumstances was to ban spectators from sporting events and greatly restrict the movement of foreign athletes, coaches, officials, support staff and press – a move that furthered dampened the spirits of those anticipating the Games.

In the days just prior to the start of the Olympic Games, there were protests calling for the cancelation of the Games. Only one day before the Olympics opening ceremony, Ariake, the man-made islands where much of the Tokyo2020 competition would take place, was like a ghost town.

But on the afternoon of Friday, July 23, 2021, hours before the start of the Olympics, the aerial acrobatic jet team called The Blue Impulse flew over the center of Tokyo painting the Olympic rings in the sky to the delight of growing crowds, just as they did on October 10, 1964.

People began buzzing about the stadium, fighting for photo ops in front of the Olympic rings, and setting up camp for the evening. They wouldn’t be allowed in the stadium. But they knew they could watch the ceremony fireworks and drone show from anywhere around the stadium. And despite the occasional shout of protest, no one was going to stop them from joining the fun.

Over the course of the Olympics and Paralympics, the news cycle in Japan featured more stories about Team Japan and its historic Olympic medal rush (58 total, 27 gold) than the number of infections in Tokyo (which happened to peak at the exact same time as the Olympics and Paralympics). Japanese women, in fact, shined more brightly than the men.

 

It’s the Journey

I did not attend any Tokyo2020 sporting events, despite holding a great number of tickets. But I met friends and acquaintances from overseas here and there. And thanks to my book, I appeared on CBS and NBC in the US, CBC in Canada, NHK in Japan, countless times on BBC radio in the UK, as well as Danish and Brazilian television.

The highlight of these Olympics for me was when I organized and hosted, on behalf of the World Olympians Association, a panel of athletes who competed at the 1964 Tokyo Summer Games, walking with them down memory lane, recalling the historic enormity of that Olympiad, the magical moments of competition, and the graciousness of their Japanese hosts. (See video below.)

When I started this journey nearly 7 years ago, I did not achieve everything I had hoped for at Tokyo2020. Nobody could under the circumstances.

But I remind myself of this age-old adage: it is not the destination. It is the journey.

Along this journey, I have met hundreds of athletes, coaches, Olympic and Paralympic committee administrators, sports marketers, journalists and academics – people who have enriched my understanding of the world, and of humanity.

I am grateful to you all.

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

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。

First book copy_1
An advance copy in my hands.

It looks great.

It feels great.

What was once, four-and-a-half years ago, only a spasmodic interaction of neurons – an idea, a dream – is now, to me, a weighty tome, a freshly printed book of off-white pages that flip crisply at the touch.

1964: The Greatest Year in the History of Japan – How the Tokyo Olympics Symbolized Japan’s Miraculous Rise from the Ashes is now a reality.

A sample chapter is available now – please download a copy here. The initial reviews are very good.

But you be the judge. The book launches on July 8, 2019. I can’t wait for you to read it.

First book copy_2
A picture of my father in the Preface – my inspiration for this book.

Final Book Cover-LOCK

They were called the Innocent Olympics, and the Happy Games.

But the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, a true turning point in Japan’s history, was not taking place in a vacuum. The world did not stop. In fact, the 1964 Tokyo Olympics was held in the midst of global turmoil so significant you may not believe what was happening as summer turned to autumn that year, particularly during those Olympic Games.

Read about those amazing events in the introductory chapter of my book – 1964: The Greatest Year in the History of Japan – which I am offering at this link.

After four-and-a-half years of research and writing, my book on the 1964 Tokyo Olympics will finally be published. The target date is July 8, 2019.

My publisher, Lioncrest Publishing, has designed a wonderful cover, which I have debuted here. I hope it conveys to you the excitement of those times, a moment when all of Japan hit the pause button for two weeks on their relentless drive to improve their nation and their lives, so they could reflect how far they had come, and still how far they hoped to go.

1964 was in fact only 19 years after Japan lay devastated and demoralized after losing the Pacific War. The 1964 Tokyo Olympics symbolized redemption, confidence regained, and a profound gratefulness that the world would come to them with open arms. And the world were pleasantly surprised to be welcomed too with a hearty embrace.

If you want to know what some 1964 Olympians, academics and writers thought of my book, here are some advanced referrals.

Thank you for joining me on this journey.

1000 days in a row

Every day.

He ran every day for at least a mile from December 20, 1964 to January 30, 2017.

That’s 52 years and 39 days straight!

Ron Hill, of Accrington, Lancashire, is a three-time Olympian, who finished 19th in the marathon at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, and is without a doubt, my patron saint of consistency.

So, I state with some humility that today, Wednesday, January 24, 2018, with this post, I have published an original article on The Olympians for the 1,000th day in a row.

When I started this blog on May 1, 2015, as a kind-of first draft of my book on the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, I had no intent of publishing a post a day. But alas, one day led to the next, and so on and so on….

I will continue the streak for a while, but I will no longer fret about skipping a day, or two or three. What little time I have for writing on the weekend will eventually shift to time writing the book on ’64, the raison d’etre of this blog.

Now it’s time to do the real writing. Gotta start moving faster. 2020 is around the corner.

Roy's 2nd Birthday
Roy’s 2nd Birthday
It’s been exactly two years since I started my journey to understand the context, the organization and the stories of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. My father was at those games as a news producer for NBC, and I turned one years old on Opening Day.

I moved to Tokyo for a third time in January, 2014, excited by Tokyo’s selection as the host city for the 2020 Summer Games. Surprised to find not a single book on the 1964 Tokyo Olympics in English, I endeavored to write the definitive record. On May 1, 2015, I started my blog, The Olympians is in many ways, the first draft of my book.

All, thank you for your wonderful comments and support!

 

Olympians 1964

 

Amazing Olympians