News

by Kyosuke Mizukawa, Senior Staff Writer

In July 1957, the Hiroshima Municipal Baseball Stadium in the area of Moto-machi (in Hiroshima City’s present-day Naka Ward), on the north side of the A-bomb Dome, was completed. It was the new home field for the Hiroshima Carp (now the Hiroshima Toyo Carp). On July 22, for a minor league game, the stadium’s night-game lights were turned on for the first time. On the night of July 24, around 23,000 spectators packed the stands to watch a regular-season game against the Hanshin Tigers under the bright lights of the stadium.

Helping out during practice

That year, Takashi Suzuki, 82, a resident of the town of Kumano-cho in Hiroshima Prefecture and at the time a third-year student at Kokutaiji Junior High School (located in Hiroshima’s present-day Naka Ward), would visit the Municipal Baseball Stadium whenever there was a Carp game. He said, “I worked part-time as a member of the grounds crew. The Carp players treated me kindly, so I also had fun helping out during practices.”

In 1948, when Mr. Suzuki was five years old, the Chugoku Shimbun published a series of feature articles with a photograph on February 4 showing an image of a young boy cutting wheat with his mother near Hiroshima City Hall amidst the food shortages at the time. After moving out of a nearby shack, his family had settled in the area of Ote-machi (in Hiroshima’s present-day Naka Ward), and Mr. Suzuki helped support the household by delivering newspapers. When the Municipal Baseball Stadium was nearing completion, his teacher asked him if he wanted to work as a member of the grounds crew. The teacher apparently approached students who needed part-time jobs due to difficult family circumstances.

Wearing a uniform with an advertisement for a beer company on the back, Mr. Suzuki would go out onto the field for pre-game practices. In addition to picking up baseballs, he would toss balls to players during batting practice and serve as their partner in games of catch to warm up their arms. During games, he would hand new balls to the umpire and retrieve foul balls from the stands full of spectators.

Mr. Suzuki fondly remembers Carp outfielder Satoshi Hirayama, who passed away in 2021, saying, “He would often call out to me, ‘Hey, boy.’” Mr. Hirayama was a second-generation Japanese-American from the United States, affectionately known by his nickname “Fever Hirayama.” Mr. Suzuki recalled, “He was small in stature but a very fast base-runner.” Watching him perform up close dazzled Mr. Suzuki.

In 1958, Mr. Suzuki left his job as a member of the grounds crew and enrolled as a part-time high school student. After graduating, he found a job at a local business and continued to visit the Municipal Baseball Stadium many times as a Carp fan.

Copper plate’s plea for peace

The Hiroshima Municipal Baseball Stadium, which served as the Carp’s home stadium until 2008, was built by the Hiroshima City government. The construction was supported by donations from local businesses.

The front entrance of the stadium was decorated with a copper plate that included the engraved phrase “Peace will prevail forever.” In November 1956, the U.S. Major League Baseball team the Dodgers donated the plate on its visit to Hiroshima. Dodgers’ team president Walter O’Malley explained his hope that the plate would be maintained forever at the new night-game stadium.

At the time, the home stadium of the Dodgers, the team that had won the World Series the previous year, was located in Brooklyn, New York. Jackie Robinson, the first Black player in the major leagues, along with other team members, were visiting Japan for a series of friendship games between Japan and the United States. On November 1, the Dodgers played a game at Hiroshima Sogo Stadium against All Kansai, a team composed of players from such teams as the Carp, Hanshin Tigers, and Nankai Hawks. The Dodgers also visited the Cenotaph for the A-bomb Victims and laid wreaths of flowers.

The copper plate reads, “We dedicate this visit in memory of those baseball fans and others who here died by atomic action on August 6, 1945. May their souls rest in peace and with god’s help and man’s resolution peace will prevail forever, amen.” The plate was passed on to the new Mazda Stadium (located in Hiroshima’s Minami Ward) when it became the Carp’s home stadium in 2009 and is now displayed in a sports bar inside the stadium.

(Originally published on March 25, 2025)