Militarism and Baseball's Contradiction
In the 1940s, baseball became a target of criticism as an 'enemy sport' originating from America. English terms like strike, ball, and out were replaced with Japanese equivalents. However, the military did not completely ban baseball, recognizing its utility for soldier fitness and public entertainment. In this contradictory situation, professional baseball barely survived. In 1944, it was reorganized into the 'Japan Baseball Patriotic Association,' maintaining its existence by serving national policy.
Conscripted Players - From Ballparks to Battlefields
As the war intensified, draft notices reached professional baseball players. Eiji Sawamura received three conscription orders and was killed in December 1944 off the Philippines at age 27. Sawamura was the great ace of early Japanese professional baseball, and his death brought immeasurable loss. Beyond Sawamura, many promising players including Masaru Kagiura, Masaki Yoshihara, and Shinichi Ishimaru lost their lives on battlefields. Most were in their twenties, talents lost who would likely have made baseball history had there been no war.
Find books about wartime NPB on Amazon
Glorifying Departure - The Complicity of Teams and Military
Teams glorified players' departures as 'heroes fighting for the nation.' Farewell games were held before deployment, players appeared at stadiums in military uniforms, and fans sent them off with banzai cheers. This staging served as self-defense for teams avoiding 'unpatriotic' criticism while functioning as propaganda for the military to boost national morale. Individual players' wishes and fears were disregarded, with one-sided narratives of 'gladly heading to battle' being constructed. After the war, this glorification structure was not critically examined and was long passed down as 'moving episodes.'
Biographies of Eiji Sawamura are also helpful
Post-War Silence - The Unexamined History of Complicity
After the war, professional baseball rapidly recovered and regained its status as national entertainment. However, baseball's complicity with militarism was not sufficiently examined. The facts of cooperating with English term elimination, glorifying player departures, and providing baseball as a morale-boosting tool were obscured within the post-war narrative of 'recovery and hope.' The Sawamura Award, named after Eiji Sawamura, was established in 1947, but without reflection on the structure that sent Sawamura to war. Baseball's war responsibility, like Japanese society's overall ambiguity about war responsibility, remains insufficiently addressed.