The Yomiuri

Autograph Hounds: The Bane of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics (kind of)

Soya Skobtsova autographs
Businesslike Zoya Skobtsova signs autographs for kids at Russian camp outside Tokyo_Sports Illustrated, October 19, 1964

It’s days before the start of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and Olympic fever in Tokyo is rising. Athletes from all over the world were arriving days if not weeks in advance, filing off of planes and ships and filling the Olympic villages in Yoyogi, Enoshima and Lake Sagami.

For most Japanese, the Olympic villages were pop-up mini United Nations, places of such diversity to shock the mono-culture of Japan. They were drawn to the villages with the hopes of seeing the wide variety of shapes, colors and sizes of the world population, to shake hands with the foreigners, take pictures with them, and of course, get their autographs.

Certainly, to get the autograph of swimming siren Kiki Caron from France, or the amazing barefoot runner from Ethiopia Abebe Bikila, or the 218 cm giant center on the USSR basketball team, Janis Krumins would be a coup. But apparently, the Japanese would rush up to anyone who looked like a foreigner and ask for their autograph.

Hayes Jones was not just anyone – he was the 110-meter hurdles gold medalist. But when he wrote down his name “Hayes,” he would cause a ruckus beyond his expectation:

When I was going into town after the winning the gold in Tokyo, I was leaving the village to see my wife, and these Japanese kids were outside with the autograph pads and they saw me call me out, and this kid put my pen and paper in front of me. I started signing my sign, “Hayes”. …they started shouting “Bob Hayes” is here. I didn’t have the nerve to write “Hayes Jones”.

The “fanaticism” of the Japanese to get autographs was apparently wearing thin on athletes and officials alike, even before the Olympics opened, so much so that the press had words of caution for their readers. As you can read in the Yomiuri article of October 5, 1964 below, athletes were “outraged,” at risk of “writer’s cramp”! To be honest, it’s hard to tell whether the article was preaching, or teasing….

Some athletes have become so outraged that whenever they see these “fanatics” they raise their voices, yelling them to go away.

The great majority of the determined pack of autograph hounds consist of people assigned to the village. These are mostly defense force servicemen, interpreters and assorted workers who often show utter disregard for the time, place or mood of athletes in asking for autographs.

If this trend remains unchecked, many athletes will end up having writer’s cramp before they leave for home.

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The Yomiuri, October 5, 1964
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The Cholera “Outbreak” of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics: A Guy With Diarrhea Clears Out Shimoda

Cholera Quarantine_Yomiuri_14oct1964

It was only 13 months ago when the World Health Organization declared zika a global health emergency, particularly in Latin America. With babies born with deformed heads, men and women alike were worried about going to Brazil for the Rio Olympics last August.

And while the zika virus has not exploded into a pandemic as some had warned last year, it is still an outbreak of urgency, one that still concerns mothers-to-be in the affected regions.

In 1964, a disease that struck fear in populations throughout the world was cholera. From 1961 into the 1979s, the world was facing the seventh known outbreak of a cholera strain called El Tor. While El Tor was rarely fatal, its symptoms of severe watery diarrhea over days were enough to cause considerable fear. El Tor emerged from Indonesia, to such countries as Bangladesh, India, the USSR, Italy, North Africa and the South Pacific.

On Tuesday, October 13, 1964, the third day of the Tokyo Olympics, the newspapers explained that El Tor had made it to Japan. The October 14 Yomiuri reported that Mr. Shoji Endo, a company employee of Dai-ichi Kinzoku Company, a trading company that specialized in importing metal. Apparently, Endo had returned to Japan on Saturday, October 10, after working in Kenya for three months, and then returned to Japan through Calcutta, India and Bangkok, Thailand. Immediately after arriving in Tokyo, he boarded a train to the resort town of Shimoda to join his company colleagues on a company trip. On Tuesday, October 11, Endo fell ill with diarrhea.

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Early 20th century cholera-prevention notice in Tokyo

Thus commenced a mini-panic. Once they realized that Endo had recently passed through Calcutta and Bangkok, where El Tor cholera had apparently been spreading rapidly, and his diarrhea, officials acted relatively quickly:

  • People who had been in contact with Endo, colleagues and resort staff, were immediately placed in an isolation ward at a Shimoda hospital.
  • The Shizuoka Prefecture government set up a cholera precaution headquarters at the resort, and set up facilities to inoculate the 15,000 residents of Shimoda and enforce quarantine measures.
  • In Tokyo, the Welfare Ministry ordered an extensive anti-cholera campaign, and sent an official to Shimoda to ensure enforcement of the inoculations as well as the disinfection of buildings (where foreigners have stayed) and ditches and the extermination of rats, flies and cockroaches.
  • The Japanese National Railways, as well the Keisei Electric Railway Company took measures to disinfect stations on Endo’s travel route.
  • The Izumi-so Inn was effectively closed, cordoned off from the public.

Of course, this was a disaster not only for the Izumi-so Inn, but for the tourism business in Shimoda. As The Yomiuri explained, “the outbreak of cholera was having a serious effect on the town which depends on tourism for its finances. By Tuesday evening, an estimated 1,500 bookings had been canceled and the figure was rising.

The inns are normally packed with 4,000 tourists daily. The town tourist association estimated losses at JPY6,000,000 for Tuesday alone.”

As it turns out, there was no cholera outbreak in Shimoda. Perhaps it was because the officials isolated Endo in time – cholera, officials said, is contagious only after symptoms have appeared, and apparently Endo had shown no symptoms before he left Tokyo for Shimoda. Endo eventually recovered and that was that.

As for the Izumi-so Inn, it is still a thriving resort hotel, which, according to this Booking.com summary, is “a 3-mintue drive from Gero Train Station…offers Japanese-style rooms, an indoor and an open-air natural hot spring bath and Japanese cuisine.” If you’re in Japan and want to enjoy hot springs by the seaside, then look no further. The Izumi-so Inn averages an impressive 8.7 points out of 10 on the site’s review section.

Izumi-so Inn
Izumi-so Inn
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Opening Ceremonies at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics: Getting in by Hook or by Crook

Konjiki Tsukasa and Masa Akimoto _The Yomiuri_October 5, 1964
From The Yomiuri_October 5, 1964

Konjiki Tsukasa was on October 10. So he thought it would be great to get married on October 10. And since the Olympics were in town, why not get married at the National Stadium on October 10, 1964, the opening day of the Tokyo Olympics.

His fiance, Masa Akimoto, agreed.

But first they had to get tickets. According to an article in The Yomiuri on October 11, 1964, the couple had 70 friends apply for opening day tickets, perhaps the hottest tickets ever to go on sale in Japan at the time. The system at the time was to apply and get your names thrown in a lottery. Fortunately, two of their friends landed them a ticket each.

But now, in addition to a ticket for the priest, they needed two witnesses. Instead of trying to find two more tickets, Konjiki called the Japan Travel Bureau (JTB) many times to try to convince them to find two people who already had tickets to the Opening Ceremonies to be their wedding witnesses. According to an October 5 Yomiuri article, JTB personnel did not initially take the requests seriously, suspecting a possible scam. But Konjiki persisted, and finally convinced JTB to find two people who happened to be seated near Konjiki and Akimoto. JTB then provided an extra ticket for the priest.

Wearing red blazers with the Olympic emblem, likely similar to what the members of the Japanese Olympic team wore, the party of five entered the stadium at 10 am, about 5 hours prior to the start of the Games, and got hitched. They then proceeded to wait patiently, got to their seats for the Opening Ceremonies, and had one of the memorable wedding days a Japanese couple could possibly have.

That was one way to get in to see the Opening Ceremonies. The Yomiuri explained on October 11 another way…which did not end well. I’ll just let you read the report about these two students:

Two youths without tickets so eager to see the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games that they hid themselves in National Stadium before the event, were arrested before the start of ceremonies by patrolling policemen.

A 19-year-old boy from Tsuabame, Niigata-ken, whose name was withheld, entered the stadium Thursday (two days before) wearing a fake press armband, after showing a business card of a Niigata Nippo newspaper reporter.

A second youth, Shuro Iino, 21, freshman a Waseda University, was discovered hiding in a toilet at 11:15 pm Friday, after climbing over a fence.

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The Unseen Hurdle in the Steeplechase at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics: When 3,000 Meters Measured About 3,460

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Los Angeles, CA- Photo shows the start of the 3000-meter steeplechase (left to right) #117, Volmari Iso-Hollo of Finland; #417, G.W. Dawson of U.S.A.; #194, T. Evenson, Great Britain; #442, J.P. McCluskey, U.S.A. It was won by Volmari Iso-Hollo of Finland

A 3,000 meter steeplechase is punishing. An athlete has to hurdle 28 barriers and splash through 7 water jumps before arriving exhausted at the finish line.

At the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, Volmari Iso-Hollo of Finland was over 35 meters ahead of his closest rival when he crossed the finish line….except there was no finish line. He saw that the lap counter read one more lap to go…so one Iso-Hollo went until he did finally break the tape to win the gold medal.

Some 13 seconds later, Brit Thomas Evenson completed the race, followed by American Joseph McCluskey. Except a funny thing happened on the way to the finish line. The race had already ended before it had ended.

Apparently, the official in charge of the lap counter forget to record the first lap. In other words, the runners all ran an extra lap, or an additional 460 meters. Fortunately for Iso-Hollo, he was clearly in the lead when he completed 3,000 meters. Unfortunately for McCluskey, he was in second at the end of 3,000. As is explained in The Complete Book of the Olympics 2012, McCluskey pointed out that they had all run an extra lap, and that he had been in second at the end of 3,000 meters. When officials realized the error, they offered a re-run the next day. McCluskey declined the chance. As the book quotes him, “a race has only one finish line.”

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Joe McCluskey

Despite the fact that the order of the finishers was not changed, the officials thought to change the finishing time. They somehow came up with a revised time of 9:18.4, which would have been an Olympic record according to The Yomiuri (October 10, 1964). But there was simply too much guess work involved to make that time official. So the record stands, that Iso-Hollo won the gold in the 3000-meter steeplechase at the 1932 Olympics in 10:33.4.

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Triple Jump Champion Naoto Tajima Part 2: Looking Back to LA and Berlin, Looking Forward to Tokyo

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Naoto Tajima in Berlin.

On the eve of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, The Yomiuri published an article by Naoto Tajima, the triple jump gold medalist and long jump bronze medalist of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. This article from October 10, 1964 was an overview of the Olympics from 1912 to 1960, with personal impressions of the 1932 Los Angeles and 1936 Berlin Olympics.

The following provides Tajima’s comparison of the 1932 and 1936 Olympics, one of practical simplicity and the other of martial majesty.

1932 Los Angeles Olympics

California has little rain. The preparations for the Games were made smoothly. No difficulties cropped up at all. The premises in the Olympic Village, though, were no better than shacks. There were four athletes in each shack. The walls and ceilings were made of cardboard.

An odd feature of the Olympic Village was its row of open air toilets. There were partitions between the toilets, but there was no roof. Overhead could be seen the stars, shining in the Californian sky. The Los Angeles Games were far smaller than the Berlin Olympics, but the atmosphere was bright and cheerful, refreshingly free from still formality. Everything was liberal and open-hearted.

Tajima explained this open-heartedness was evident on the track as well.

I was 19 when I competed in the hop, step and jump in the Los Angeles Olympic Games. I did quite well on my first jump, but I carelessly let my hand touch the sand. The distance of my jump was measured only up to the point where I had touched the sand, and so my measured jump was much shorter than it would otherwise have been.

At this point, the chief judge patted me on the shoulder and said in a kindly voice, “Don’t let your hand touch the sand next time.” I had been feeling very nervous, since it was my first experience in an international sporting event, but the judge’s friendly advice helped me relax

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A Tajima leap at the 1936 Olympics

 

1936 Berlin Olympics

Tajima described the Los Angeles games “rather like that of a hot dog, that typically American food. There nothing artificial in the arrangements for the Los Angeles Games. What was provided what was essential”. After all, the LA Games in 1932 were held in the midst of the Great Depression. Four years later, as economies crept out of the Depression, the 1936 Berlin Olympics by comparison were “spectacular”, according to Tajima.

(The 1936 Berlin Games) were magnificent both in sale and in the way they were managed. Not only was the German aptitude for organization displayed to the full, but Hitler lavished human and material resources on the preparations for the Games regardless of expense. The Olympic Village had a Finnish steam bath. It even had a Japanese-style bath too. In the dining halls, dishes of every country taking part in the Games were served.

The Berlin Olympics were the first in which there was an Olympic flame relay. They were the first and only Olympics in which winners were given potted oak-tree plants. It was explained that the oak has been chosen because it is a robust tree, capable of growing anywhere in the world and therefore suitable for presentation to athletes from all countries. The idea was typically German.

According to Tajima’s Japanese Wikipedia page, Tajima donated the oak tree seedlings to the Faculty of Agriculture of Kyoto University, his alma mater, where oak trees from Germany were raised. In fact, seedlings from these trees have been sent to all parts of Japan, where Tajima’s golden legacy literally grows.

However, Tajima did not enjoy a particular aspect of the Berlin Olympics: the omnipresent swastika.

The black Nazi swastika against its red background was too gaudy and clashed with the simple Olympic flag. The Berlin Games were a superb affair, but they left an unpleasant taste since they were too cleverly exploited by the Nazis for their own purposes.

At the end of the article, Tajima expressed his wishes for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. His goal for those Games were probably what most Japanese were hoping for as well:

The Tokyo Olympics will be a success, even if some things go wrong, if everyone coming to Tokyo for the Games feels: “We really enjoyed them. We are glad we came.”

By Tajima’s metric, based on the dozens of people affiliated with the Tokyo Olympics I have spoked with, those Games in 1964 were a rousing success.

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The Fight for Fish Between Japan and South Korea: A Pre-Olympics “Prisoner Exchange” on the High Seas

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Syngman Rhee Line: a boundary established by South Korean President Syngman Rhee to demarcate the South Korean maritime border, a line disputed by the Japanese government and one that Japanese fishing boats would persistently cross.

Korea and Japan has history. Over 1500 years of cultural exchange, trade and military conflict has shaped an affinity and a rivalry that goes from love to hate and back.

In the days before the start of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, before they would face off in men’s and women’s volleyball, the two nations were facing off in the high seas. On Monday, October 7, 1964, according to The Japan Times, a Japanese fishing boat was stopped by a South Korean patrol ship. The Korean authorities were attempting to stop the Japanese boat from fishing in what South Korea claimed were their territorial waters.

The seven Japanese fishermen were escorted onto (taken prisoner by?) the South Korean patrol boat. Apparently the seas were rough, and the two boats collided, creating damage to the fishing boat. Eventually, the 77.5 ton fishing boat, named No. 58 Hoyo Maru, sank.

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Japan Times, October 6, 1964

The Korean boat also suffered some damage and apparently a Korean coast guard was sent to do repair work, according to The Yomiuri. The man fell into the water, but was fortunately picked up by another Japanese fishing boat close by. A second Korean coast guard was in a boat looking for the first one and found him being cared for (captured?) on the Japanese boat, and boarded (was taken prisoner by?) the Japanese boat.

Which set up the “prisoner exchange”.

When the Japanese realized that the Koreans were holding 7 Japanese fishermen at the same time the Koreans realized that the Japanese were holding 2 Korean coast guard personnel, they probably thought they had spent enough time in the tense choppy waters of the Pacific Ocean. A trade was made and all parties went to their respective homes.

But this maritime battle would continue for another year, until the approval of the Japan-Korea Fishery Agreement in 1965. Until that time, nearly 4,000 Japanese had been arrested and over 300 Japanese boats by South Korean authorities. Additionally 44 people had died in these fishing conflicts.

The Japanese men’s and women’s volleyball teams handily defeated their South Korean opponents, but you can bet the fans and the teams in those matches were a tad more pumped up to sink the players on the other side of the net.

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