The Aloha Team

At our April 10 session with Dr. Yamashita, he mentioned the Nisei, American-born sons/daughters of Japanese immigrants who were present in Hawaii during the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. At that time, there were close to 40,000 Japanese on the island and they were clearly the largest ethnic group. Some of these Japanese-Americans served in the Hawaii National Guard and would later become part of the 100th Infantry Battalion. Some members of this segregated battalion would travel to Wisconsin (Camp McCoy) and Mississippi, while others would remain in Oahu. The Japanese were not the only ethnic group in Hawaii and several other ethnic groups, along with the Japanese, participated in the Hawaii Baseball League, a semipro league. Teams were typically broken down by ethnic group, thus the Caucasians were the Wanderers, the Chinese were the Chinese Tigers, the Filipinos were the Filipinos, the Hawaiians were the Hawaiians, the Japanese were the Asahi (rising sun), and the Portuguese were known as the Braves. I believe Dr. Yamashita's dad played for the Asahi. At any rate, many of the Japanese Americans who were shipped to Camp McCoy in Wisconsin ended up forming and becoming part of another baseball team that would become known as the Aloha Team. In many ways, these players were ambassadors for Japanese Americans at a time when people of Japanese descent were not in vogue in the United States. There are a lot of personal interest stories related to this unusual traveling squad of baseball players. I mentioned this team to my US History class and they were enthralled. They even compared the Aloha Team to the women's league depicted in the movie "A League of Their Own." I've only scratched the surface of this story but I would encourage anyone interested to google "Aloha Team" and find out more for yourself.