The father of Japanese football

KIRKLAND — The old man accepts the credit reluctantly, chuckling and smiling and shaking his head. That was a long time ago, he says, and besides, anybody similarly placed might have done the same.

"It's a great honor," says Peter Okada, 84, crunching on pistachios in the kitchen of his Kirkland home, "but I don't think I deserve it."

To many, he is known as the father of football in Japanese high schools.

He has been feted and praised and flown halfway around the world, yet still he wonders what the fuss is all about. For him, introducing football to his father's homeland was almost an accidental stop on a life journey that began in California, included a stay in an internment camp and criss-crossed the Pacific.

The fact remains, however, that the game Okada taught as a young serviceman more than a half-century ago has flourished in that foreign land.

Proof could be found at Lake Washington High School this week, where more than a dozen visiting Japanese players donned shoulder pads and helmets and borrowed purple jerseys.

Fifty-seven years later, they are still playing the American game.

Peter Okada had no way of knowing it would turn out like this.

In 1946, he was just a 20-something kid, stationed in Osaka with the 108th Military Government Team during the American occupation of Japan after World War II. He oversaw reforms in the Japanese educational system, sports included.

Kendo and judo had been banned from schools because it was believed that those popular and traditional pastimes fostered militarism. Student morale seemed to be sagging, Okada said, so he approached school officials and proposed an American answer.

"I would like to introduce a sport which is normally tackle," Okada told them. "But this is what we call touch football."

Granted approval, Okada requisitioned two footballs from the Army and on his days off began teaching the game to groups of students at nearby Toyonaka and Ikeda high schools.

The plays were rudimentary at first, recalled from his early years as a sandlot quarterback growing up in Los Angeles.

"They took notes," Okada said. "I'd go there every Saturday to see how they were doing, and they learned fast."

The weekly sessions lasted little more than a year, but that was all it took for the sport to take hold.

Now, when the two best high-school football teams in Japan meet each winter for the national championship, the winner receives the Peter Okada Trophy.

"He is a legendary person in Japan," said Haruo Higashimoto, 52, a college professor and football official who has been traveling for the past week with a group of 16 players from Toyonaka High. "He planted a seed, and that seed grew, and high-school football has spread all over Japan."

The connection came about by simple chance.

Okada said he had no special reason for choosing those schools, only that both happened to be close to where he lived.

"I chose them on the way to my home," he said, "because I was using Saturday on my day off to teach them, and I wanted it to be as convenient for myself as possible."

Four years earlier, Okada would not have been allowed to make that goodwill gesture. As a Japanese-American, he was deemed an enemy of the United States following the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

"When the war started, I was in church," Okada said. "I came out of church and they said, 'You know Japan bombed Pearl Harbor?' And I said, 'Where the heck's Pearl Harbor?' "

Okada, his three brothers and their widowed mother — his father died of cancer when Okada was 9 — soon found themselves detained with other Japanese-Americans at Santa Anita racetrack.

Some of the first to arrive at the assembly center were housed in horse barns.

"They whitewashed it," Okada remembered, "but there was no question who the previous occupant was because of the smell."

At the camp, he heard of an Irish priest named Father Edward Flanagan who was offering jobs to Japanese-American evacuees at Boys Town in Nebraska.

Okada wrote a letter to the priest and was accepted as a landscaper. After working one year with Father Flanagan, Okada enlisted in the Army.

That decision ultimately led to what transpired this week at Lake Washington High School, where the Japanese players took part in a full-contact workout with the team.

"They have exceeded my expectations," said Lake Washington coach Tim Tramp, who plans on taking his team to Japan next summer as part of a similar exchange. "I thought their skill level would be a little bit more of a challenge for me."

Toyonaka High has about 960 students in grades 10 through 12, making it about the size of an average Class 3A school in Washington. Last fall, 48 boys turned out for football.

"Soccer and baseball are much more popular," said Yudai Kunikata, who at 5 feet 9 and 182 pounds is the team's biggest player.

Though the cultural differences weren't so obvious on a recent afternoon, they do exist.

FieldTurf and Friday-night lights?

Forget about it.

High-school football in Japan is played mostly on Sundays. On dirt fields. And sometimes without coaches, who are all volunteers.

"If you're lucky, you can play football on AstroTurf or natural turf once or twice a year," said Kenjiro Ishiki, 56, a fourth-year coach at Toyonaka. "But that is only if your team is very strong."

The better players can play in college, but scholarships for football are virtually non-existent, Ishiki said. Japan does not have a professional league, though there are many adult clubs and company-sponsored teams.

That is part of the reason Higashimoto said he does not expect a Japanese football player to make an Ichiro-sized impact in the NFL anytime soon.

"Football is a physical game," Higashimoto said. "Baseball, you don't have any contact or collisions. So the size is our weakness. Maybe if you're a kicker or receiver, maybe it would be a good position for Japanese."

For the past eight days, the Japanese players have been part of Lake Washington's summer program. Last Saturday, they even participated in a passing camp with the team at the University of Washington.

"They've got a lot of heart," said linebacker Carlos Rosas. "They play hard and they never complain."

Teammate Brock Cote glanced toward the corner of the end zone, where after a two-hour practice in nearly 90-degree heat, a Japanese player in full pads was doing agility drills.

"They're amazing, man," Cote said. "I mean, look. We've got guys staying after practice from Japan playing football."

A tradition 57 years in the making started with a simple, selfless gesture. The boys of Toyonaka High know the story well; their coach reminds them of it often.

They left for home this morning, but not before meeting Peter Okada.

They gathered round him, snapped pictures and shook his hand. The old man said a few words himself, addressing the team in Japanese.

"I just said, 'It's great that you're able to come and experience this,' " he said. "It was nice to see them playing. It has been a long time."

Matt Peterson: 206-515-5536 or mpeterson@seattletimes.com