NEWS RELEASE

While Barack Obama becomes the first sitting U.S. President to visit Hiroshima this Memorial Day weekend, in 1956 the Brooklyn Dodgers played an exhibition game there as part of their 30-day Goodwill Tour to Japan, just 11 years removed from the end of World War II.

On November 1, 1956, Dodger players, coaches and team officials, including club President Walter O’Malley and Dodger Director Bud Holman, a prominent business leader in Vero Beach, Florida, visited the Cenotaph for the A-bomb victims (Memorial Monument for Hiroshima, City of Peace). The day was filled with emotion and reflection.

That same afternoon, at the entrance to Hiroshima Stadium, Dodger players and executives and the Kansai All- Stars (professional players from Japan’s teams in the Osaka region) gathered in unity. Understanding the significance of this stop on the Goodwill Tour, O’Malley wrote the language for a bronze plaque, had it made before the trip and brought it with him to Hiroshima to be mounted that day. Only the players and executives participated in the solemn ceremony.

Inscribed on the plaque: “We dedicate this visit in memory of those baseball fans and others who died by atomic action on Aug. 6, 1945. May their souls rest in peace and with God’s help and man’s resolution peace will prevail forever, amen.” The plaque bore the names of Dodger President O’Malley, Dodger Manager Walter Alston, Dodger team captain Pee Wee Reese and other club officials.

In Spring, 1957, O’Malley invited Tokyo Yomiuri Giants Manager Shigero Mizuhara, legendary sportswriter and goodwill tour ambassador Sotaro Suzuki, as well as Giants catcher Shigero Fujio and pitcher Sho Horiuchi to be their guests at Dodgertown from February 28-March 22. Fujio and Horiuchi trained alongside the Dodgers. For their many successes and contributions to the sport, Mizuhara and Suzuki were inducted into the Japan Baseball Hall of Fame in 1977 and 1968, respectively. Also during Spring, 1957, an identical sister plaque from the one in Hiroshima was installed at the west side of the press box at Holman Stadium, the spring training home ballpark of the Dodgers from 1953-2008 and has remained there ever since.

Since the Dodgers’ 1956 tour, there have been two new stadiums in Hiroshima, each to replace the older version. Hiroshima Municipal Stadium, opened in July 1957 and used by the Carp of Nippon Professional Baseball’s Central League, was replaced in April 2009 by Mazda Zoom-Zoom Stadium. The original bronze plaque was relocated from outside of Hiroshima Stadium and placed on the wall of a special site at the current stadium commemorating the historic visit.

Dodgers who were part of the original plaque dedication ceremony and are Hall of Famers include Jackie Robinson, Reese, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Don Drysdale, Manager Alston, Coach Billy Herman and O’Malley. Umpire Jocko Conlan is also in the Hall of Fame and he participated that day before umpiring the exhibition game, won by the Dodgers, 10-6.

The entire Tokyo Yomiuri Giants team was invited by O’Malley to holding spring training activities at Dodgertown in 1961, with additional Giants’ visits in 1967, 1971, 1975 and 1981. The Chunichi Dragons from Nagoya, Japan also were invited to train at Dodgertown in Spring, 1988.