Professional baseball in Japan the first American to play professional baseball in Japan when he joined the Dai Nippon Tokyo Yakyu Kurabu (Tokyo Giants) in December 1934, touring with them in 1935. Jimmy Bonna, Kiyomi "Slim" Hirakawa, Fumito "Jimmy" Horio, Kazuyoshi "George" Matsuura, Andrew "Bucky" Harris McGalliard (Japan's "Bucky Harris"), Herbert "Buster" North, Yoshio "Sam" Takahashi, and Tadashi "Bozo" Wakabayashi became the first Americans to play in Japan's professional baseball league in 1936. The American writer Robert Whiting wrote in his 1977 book "The Chrysanthemum and the Bat" that, While others have objected to characterizing the sport in these terms, many Japanese players and
Bill Yoshida Bill Yoshida William Saburo Yoshida (, December 1921- February 17, 2005), better known as Bill Yoshida, was a long time letterer for Archie Comics. He was sometimes credited as Bill Yosh or Saburo Yoshida. Born in the United States in 1921, Bill and his family were placed in an internment camp for the Japanese during World War II. In the post-war years, Bill was a guitarist and night club singer who also worked as a chef. While bowling in an all-Japanese league in New York City, one of his teammates was leading comics letterer Ben Oda. He learned comic book