“Even now, 65 years after the bombing, I can still vividly recall the people groaning and the strange stench.” That is what Isao Harimoto had to say in 2011 when he recalled the day the atomic bomb devastated Hiroshima in 1945. He was only 5 years old when he survived that event. Life after that looked incredibly different for him, and as of Wednesday, Harimoto is no longer with us. It is that extraordinary baseball career we are reflecting on.
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“Hall of Famer Isao Harimoto has passed away at 86,” Yakyu Cosmopolitan, the editor-in-chief of JapanBall, updated on X. “The Korean-Japanese outfielder survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima as a child and went on to become the first player in NPB history with 3,000 hits.”
Harimoto was born on June 19, 1940, to Jang Sang Jeong from Changnyeong-gun, Gyeongsangnam-do, and Pak Sun Bun from Hapcheon-gun. His family were Korean immigrants, and he was born in Ozu Town, now part of Minami Ward, Hiroshima. Long before he became a baseball legend, Harimoto suffered unspeakable hardships during his childhood.
He was just four, playing on the bank of the river and baking sweet potatoes with his friend. Suddenly, a truck struck him. His fourth and fifth fingers were thrust into the fire, and they became stuck together, resulting in him losing motor function.
The worst part? His uncle was turned away by the police instead of being helped because they were Korean.
Hardly a year after that, he saw a flash and heard an enormous roar.
“The next thing I knew, my mother was shielding me and my sister, three years older, with her body, though her back was covered in blood due to flying shards of glass,” he remarked.
His eldest sister, who was working in a factory at that time, suffered severe burns. His sister passed away a few days later. At the time, Harimoto had said:
“I was shocked to see a human being, the sister I so admired, transformed into such a state.”
Even after the war was over, it never got any easier for his family, as they were living under the Higashi Ohashi Bridge with several other survivors. His father moved back to South Korea and died shortly after. It was just him, his two cousins, and their mother struggling to build a life.
But they were able to slowly turn things around. Harimoto even started going to school, but discrimination was still an integral part of his upbringing. His comparatively large stature helped him stand up to the bullying faced by fellow Korean kids.
By the time he was in fifth grade, a neighborhood kid invited him to play baseball, and he fell in love with the sport after hitting a double in his very first game. But the surgery on his right hand was a huge roadblock to his control. He had to practice day and night to become a left-handed pitcher and hitter.
His passion for the game grew, and he used to climb a tree outside the stadium in Minami Kanon (Hiroshima General Ground Main Stadium) to watch the professional players.
“When I peeked into their lodgings, I saw white rice and steaks on the table,” Harimoto mentioned in an interview. “I was surprised at their well-heeled life, which led to my wish to become a professional baseball player.”
He was a good swimmer and could have joined a swimming club, but maybe it was his fate to become a baseball legend. He split his time between school and baseball after his brother convinced their mother to let him play, but he again felt discriminated against by the coach during his third year and could not play with the official team due to misconduct.
His baseball career was an unmatchable as the tragedies he survived
He eventually made his way to the Toei Flyers to start his professional career in 1959. He earned the Rookie of the Year award there, and within two years, he earned his first batting title and, a year later, his first MVP award. There was no stopping him after that.
Isao Harimoto went on to become the only NPB player to register 3,000 career hits. His tally reached 3,085 by the time he retired, and he is second only to Ichiro Suzuki in total hits. Suzuki recorded 1,278 in NPB and 3,089 in MLB, amassing a total of 4,367 hits in his career.
But the Hiroshima survivor’s 23-season baseball career has a lot of other accolades:
- Batting average of .319 – third-highest in NPB
- 1,676 RBIs – fourth in the league
- 504 home runs – seventh in Japanese baseball
- 319 stolen bases
- Total 2,752 games
By the time he hung up his boots in 1981, his career had reached a point that is almost unmatchable today. He was inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame in 1990. But throughout his career, he rarely talked about his experience with the Hiroshima bombing.
“You’ll catch something if you go near them,” was the popular belief among survivors with keloid scars. On one hand, he was the “hitting machine” whom everyone admired. On the other, people were afraid to come near him. Living through such treatment was probably a much bigger challenge than surviving the blast itself.
But he never wanted to hide, not his scars and certainly not his Korean-Japanese identity. Harimoto, however, made sure he would never talk about his misfortunes unless asked about them. But at the age of 65, he realized that the people of the country hardly knew anything about the bombing or the war. This made him quite upset and pushed him to speak out publicly. He said:
“Because I’m part of the last generation of those who can speak from personal experience about the bombing, I felt I had a duty to hand down the truth.”
He would even help with petitions urging the abolition of nuclear weapons around the world.
“Which is more important: protecting human lives or holding onto nuclear weapons?” he boldly asked. “These two things are poles apart. It’s inhuman to permit the existence of weapons that can annihilate people in an instant, when they’re just trying their best to live.”
He urged world leaders to reconsider what would happen to their loved ones if another nuclear weapon were used.
The baseball world may have lost one of its biggest legends at 86. But more than that, we lost a person who tried to help us realize how important and precious each and every life is.