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Thursday, June 19, 2008

BILL YOUNG: A true Canadian hero in our midst

posted by BOFarrell at 10h28

Over the next two weeks, as we celebrate our national heritage, West Island resident Kiyoshi Suga will have his own set of memories to reflect upon.
Five years ago, on June 28, 2003, Suga was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. In a cohort that includes Toronto Blue Jays icon Joe Carter, former Canadian major-league pitcher Kirk McCaskill and Baseball-Quebec pioneer Richard Belec, he was honoured as a member of Vancouver’s legendary Asahi baseball team.
It was a bittersweet moment. And it had been a long time coming.
The story of the Asahis begins well before World War II, when the team was the pride of the west coast Japanese-Canadian community. Within that tightly-knit circle, baseball reigned, and the Asahi were the best of the very best.
Their decades-long string of success against all comers was ultimately broken in 1941 – and with such absolute finality that the team, indeed the whole community, never recovered.
They were done in, not on the diamond, but by the haplessness of war. On Dec. 7, 1941, Japan launched a devastating attack on Pearl Harbor, an American naval base in Hawaii. In the immediate aftermath, all Japanese-Canadians living along the west coast were expelled from their homes by the government and interned in the rough British Columbia interior, where they remained for two years and more.
Back home, their possessions were confiscated and auctioned off for pennies. Except for what they carried with them into the harsh unknown, they lost everything.
It was against this background that, five years ago, the few surviving Asahi members walked proudly onto the temporary Hall of Fame stage. They understood this was about much more than baseball.
As calming breezes slipped across the emerald-green playing fields of the facility in St. Mary’s, Ont., these once-glorious ball players were saluted. A respectful Ferguson Jenkins, the sole Canadian enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., draped the Hall’s distinctive blazer across their shoulders.
Kiyoshi Suga spoke for his teammates. He began by reflecting on the former glory of the Asahis and their place in the dreams and ambitions of his community.
“In an era when Japanese Canadians were not treated with much respect or dignity or fairness,” he said, “the Asahis proved that on the field, at least, we were just as good, if not better, than the opposition.”
And then he talked of Canada, and faith in one’s country. “(Our faith) was severely tested and strained,” he said, “when we were forced out of our homes and pushed into internment.”
The oldsters remembered shanty-town quarters so bleak they called them “ghost towns,” makeshift shelters so cold that every morning you had to scrape ice off the walls – on the inside. Death was a constant presence: Suga lost two younger brothers to pneumonia.
Suga continued: “(Our faith) was further strained and almost lost when, at the end of the war, instead of being allowed to go back home, we were given a cruel choice – move out to eastern Canada or be deported to Japan.”
In the face of this unimaginable quandary, the Suga family headed east – to Montreal. The diaspora spread, and memories of the Asahis and the ghost towns faded into a silent past.
There was an Asahis reunion in October 1972, but not until 1992, when historian Pat Adachi published Asahi: A Legend in Baseball, did their story re-enter public consciousness. A National Film Board production, Sleeping Tigers: The Asahi Baseball Story, followed, with Suga playing a prominent role. There were other honours, all leading to St. Mary’s and the Hall of Fame – what Suga called the “ultimate validation for everything that has happened.”
He concluded his remarks that day with words of rousing affirmation. Restrictions and hardships notwithstanding, he said, “We still have the utmost faith in our country! Canada, is the greatest country in the world in which to live!”
First, silence. Then, applause – rich, sustained and seasoned with tears. He had struck a chord.
Today, Suga lives in Île Perrot with his wife, Margaret. A diminutive man with a full-moon smiling face, his graceful demeanor gives little hint of his place in the triumphant Asahi story.
And five years later, his words continue to echo. “Canada,” he will tell you, “is still the greatest country in the world!”

Hudson resident Bill Young is co-author
of the book, Remembering the Montreal
Expos, with Danny Gallagher.