The First Japanese Professional Game, An Update

April 15, 2026, marks the 120^th anniversary of the first professional game in Japanese baseball history. Thirty years before the formation of a professional league in Japan, Guy W. Green, the owner of the Nebraska Indians Baseball Team, gathered a dozen immigrants from Japan to form an all-Japanese baseball squad to barnstorm across the Midwest of the United States. Like Green’s Nebraska Indians players, the Japanese players signed contracts and were paid to play, making them the first known professional Japanese team on either side of the Pacific. Guy Green’s Japanese Base Ball Team played their first game on April 15, 1906, in Frankfort, a small town in Northeastern Kansas. In 2020, I published an article on this game, but after five years of further research it is time to update the story. The following article is the first in a series focusing on these Issei baseball pioneers. It includes sections from my previous article with updates and changes when necessary.

1906 Advertising Card, Ken Kitsuse Collection, National Baseball Hall of Fame

The early twentieth century was the heyday of barnstorming baseball. Independent teams crisscrossed the country playing in one-horse towns and large cities. There were all female teams, squads of only fat men, clubs of men sporting beards, and teams consisting of “exotic” ethnicities. These independent squads were often called “semi-professional” to differentiate them from teams in Organized Baseball (clubs formally associated with Major League Baseball), but they were professional enterprises. The teams signed players to contracts, paid salaries during the season, provided transportation and housing on the road, charged admission to games, and were intent on turning a profit.

In 1906 much of United States was enthralled by Japan and all things Japanese. Japan had just emerged as the improbable victor in the Russo-Japanese War and the year before the Waseda University baseball club had toured the West Coast. Guy W. Green decided to capitalize on the fad by creating an all-Japanese baseball team to barnstorm across the Midwest.

Although Green would claim that he had “scour[ed] the [Japanese] empire for the best players obtainable,” he did nothing of the sort. In early 1906 Green instructed Dan Tobey, captain of the Nebraska Indians, to form a team from Japanese immigrants living in California. Players congregated on March 15 in Havelock, Nebraska to practice.

The team contained some extraordinary men.  At first base was Ichiro Fujisaku, who played under the name Toyo Fujita. Fujisaku would become a movie star, appearing in about a dozen Hollywood and Japanese films. Playing second base was Tetsusuburo Uyeda, the third son of a Japan Diet member. During World War II, Uyeda would be jailed as a spy but afterwards his daughter would marry an heir to the Anheisier-Busch fortune. The shortstop was Ken Kitsuse, considered to be the best Issei player of the time. His father was also a member of the Japan Diet. The outfield consisted of Junjiro Uyeda, Tetsusuburo’s brother; Umekichi “Kitty” Kawashima; and Koji Naito, a graduate of Keio University. Acting as an umpire when needed was Tozan Masko, who would become a journalist, sports promoter, and eventually a swindler.

As some of the Issei players lacked the skills to play on a professional independent squad, Green and Tobey decided to bolster his roster with Native Americans —hoping that most spectators would not be able to tell the difference. Manager Dan Tobey, who would eventually be inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame as an announcer, and Nebraska Indian veteran Sandy Kissell shared the pitching duties and played outfield on their off days. Seguin, another member of the Nebraska Indians, was the catcher, while Roy Dean Whitcomb, an 18-year-old Caucasian from Lincoln, usually played third base under the name Noisy. A man known only as Doctor filled in as necessary.

Manger and pitcher Dan Tobey

During the lunch break on the second or third day of practice, Tobey handed out the club rules.  With Masuko interpreting, he laid out the fines for undesirable behavior:  $2 for being late for a game; $2 for lazy playing; $3 for refusing to follow the manager’s orders; $3 for refusing to travel to the ballpark with the team; $3 for gambling; and $5 for drinking alcohol.  He then produced a stack of contracts for the players to sign.  “Of course, we happily signed immediately,” one player remembered.  “We had been worried that Mr. Green might not be satisfied with our techniques and would send us home, so we were so happy to be offered contracts that we didn’t even think about reading it.”

After practicing for about a month in Lincoln, Nebraska, on April 13 Guy Green’s Japanese Base Ball Team headed south to begin a twenty-five-week tour that would cover over twenty-five hundred miles through Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri. Their first stop was Frankfort, a small town of about 1,400 people in northeastern Kansas, where they would play the town’s high school squad.

Prior to the game, Guy Green sent out promotional material and flooded local newspapers with advertising and press releases. At the time, there were so few Japanese living in the Midwest that many rural farmers had never seen a Japanese person. So, Green’s advertisements emphasized the players’ foreignness and the uniqueness of the team. A typical announcement read, “Green’s [team] are the most novel baseball organization the world has ever known. Every player is a genuine Japanese. Not one of them can speak a word of English. They do all their coaching in Japanese and is certainly the most Japanesy Japanese you have ever listened to.”

An advertising poster for Guy Green’s Japanese Team

Playing on the public’s fascination with the Russo-Japanese War, Green also concocted fictional backgrounds for his players. An April 13, 1906, article in the Frankfort Review noted, “One of the most interesting members of Green’s Japanese baseball team is Kitsuse, who left school in Japan to serve during the last great war with Japan. He was wounded in the left leg at Mukden so severely that he was compelled to go home and even yet he limps slightly. He is one of the best me on the team, however, and always a great favorite with the crowds.” Kitsuse, however, immigrated to California on June 8, 1903, almost two years before the 1905 Battle of Mukden.

Shortstop Ken Kitsuse

On Sunday, April 15, Frankfort welcomed the visiting team in style with a parade to Sportsman’s Park led by a thirty-piece cornet band. According to the Nebraska State Journal, “both teams, together with city officials, were in the procession.” The exact location of the ballpark is currently unknown, but evidence suggests that it was on the western edge of town.

The high schoolers took the field in brand-new grey uniforms which just arrived a couple of days before. They had F.H.S. stitched across their jerseys in red and wore red caps and stockings. The Marshall County Indexnoted that “the boys look very striking in their new toggery.” The Japanese squad wore white pants reaching just below the knees, wide leather belts, maroon stockings, maroon undershirts, and a winged-collared maroon jersey with “Greens Japs” stitched in white block letters across the chest. The caps were white with maroon bills.

A parade in Frankfort, Kansas circa 1906

As the high school contained just 41 students, the match should have been an easy victory for Green’s professional team, so Tobey started a mostly Japanese lineup. But Tobey had underestimated the skinny, 15-year-old redhead on the mound. The teenage ace, Fairfield “Jack” Walker would go on to pitch for the University of Kansas in 1911-12 and professionally in the Class D Nebraska State League and the Eastern Kansas League. Although a quiet kid, the Horton Headlight noted “when playing Walker wears a perpetual grin that makes a lot of batters mad because they think he is laughing at them.”

No box score for the game survives, just a notation of the pitchers and catchers, but based on the lineups used by the high school just two days earlier and in the following weeks, we can infer that pitcher Fairfield Walker was backed up by George Moss behind the plate; a boy identified only as Russell at first; Harold Haskins at second; Willis Cook at third; Leo Holthoefer at short; and Robert Barrett, John McNamara and Walker (unknown first name but perhaps Isaac B.) in the outfield.

The schoolboys jumped out to an early 4-1 lead after three innings, forcing Tobey to bring in what the Marshall County Index called “five professional American players.” The visitors battled back, scoring in every inning after the second, to eventually win 11-8. The Frankfort Review reported, “A large number of people witnessed the game, and they pronounced it one of the best games ever played here.”

Nonetheless, the game irked some local residents. Later that week, the Frankfort Review reported, “The protest against the Sunday ball playing, made by the ministers of this city last Saturday, met with approval of nearly everybody. There is no denying the fact that Sunday ball playing in a town the size of Frankfort is not good for the morals of the town. In a large city ball playing is alright, in fact beneficial for it amuses a class of people who would probably spend their time at worse places, and the noise does not disturb anyone. The usual small town game is annoying to many people. However, last Sunday's game at Sportsman's Park was not noisy. Our people are interested in baseball, and always patronized the games well but we know they would prefer to have the games played on other than Sundays.”

After the Sunday game, the next day Green’s team traveled 14 miles to the west to play the Blue Rapids town team at Riverside Park, which still exists. The report on the 7-6 Japanese victory in the Blue Rapid Times provides insights on the barnstorming team’s economics. “The business houses pretty generally closed up or dismissed their clerks and there was a fine turnout. There were 356 paid admissions and the school children who were admitted free swelled the attendance to close to 500. The receipts were $85.30, of which the home team got one-fourth.”

Green’s Japanese squad would stay on the road until October 10, playing about 170 games against small town teams and a few semi-pro squads throughout the Midwest. They won 122 of the 142 games for which results are known.

Despite the lengthy tour and the uniqueness of the club, The Sporting News, as well as big market newspapers in New York, Washington and Los Angeles, did not cover or even mention Green’s Japanese team. As a result, the first professional Japanese players had little impact on the national or international baseball scene and were soon forgotten. But the tour marked the true beginnings of Japanese American baseball. After the season, the players headed back to the West Coast to form amateur Japanese ball clubs. These teams’ success helped spawn numerous Nikkei clubs as baseball became an integral part of the Japanese American community and culture.

You can read more about the Guy Green’s Japanese Base Ball Team and the early pioneers of Japanese American baseball in my book Issei baseball: The First Japanese American Ballplayers (University of Nebraska Press, 2020).