The Legacy of Alameda's Japanese-American Baseball Team

Bay Curious

KQED

History, Society & Culture, Places & Travel

4.9 • 999 Ratings

🗓️ 26 June 2025

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The island of Alameda has produced some great baseball players. Hall of Fame hitter Willie Stargell even has a street named after him! Some of those ballplayers were Japanese American. In the years between World War I and World War II, the Alameda Taiiku-Kai thrived with great players like Sai Tawata leading the team and the community. Bay Curious listener Sam Hopkins saw a plaque commemorating the team's home plate and wanted to learn more about the team's history. Additional Resources: Rediscovering a Japanese-American Baseball Team in Alameda, Nearly Lost to Time Read the transcript for this episode Sign up for our newsletter Enter our Sierra Nevada Brewing Company monthly trivia contest Got a question you want answered? Ask! Your support makes KQED podcasts possible. You can show your love by going to https://kqed.org/donate/podcasts Special thanks to the Japanese American National Museum for use of the Topaz prison camp clip. That documentary was a gift of Dave Tatsuno, in Memory of Walter Honderich. This story was reported by Brian Watt. Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Gabriela Glueck and Christopher Beale. Additional support from Olivia Allen-Price, Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad, Alana Walker, Holly Kernan and everyone on Team KQED.

Transcript

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1:07.2	From KQED.
1:09.8	Japanese baseball players are hot.
1:11.6	I don't mean that the way it sounds.
1:14.6	Really, Major League Baseball's current champion, the Dodgers, have three pitchers from Japan.
1:19.6	Swings and misses strike three.
1:21.6	Shohei starts the night with a strikeout of Lamont Wade-June.
1:24.6	The most famous right now, Shohay Otani, was the league's most valuable player last season.
1:30.3	Earlier this year, the retired outfielder, Ishiro Suzuki, who played it in Seattle, New York, and Miami, was voted almost unanimously into the baseball Hall of Fame.
1:39.3	My, oh my, what a way to cap off an unbelievable year.
	...

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