American Valor Quarterly Issue 11 - Fall 2014 | Page 8

I am a Navy man! I just happen to be
black. I’m fighting for the same thing
you are.”
The captain was called and the
ensign berated. O’Neil continued,
“The thing about it was when he sat
back and thought about it, he started to
cry. I said, “Don’t cry, just don’t do it
anymore.”
JAPANESE BASEBALL
An interesting sidelight to the story
of baseball in World War II is Japanese
baseball. Americans introduced
baseball to the Japanese in the late 19th
century and in the 50 years leading up
to the war the game grew steadily in
popularity. In the 1930s baseball or
“basa baru” as the Japanese called it –
was played at the professional level with
an eight-team league and two seasons.
JIMMY TRIMBLE WAS ONE OF
BASEBALL’S TOP PITCHING
PROSPECTS WHEN HE
VOLUNTEERED FOR SERVICE IN
THE UNITED STATES MARINE
CORPS DURING WORLD WAR
II. HE WAS KILLED IN CLOSE
COMBAT WITH THE JAPANESE
DURING THE EPIC BATTLE OF
IWO JIMA, MARCH 1, 1945.

scouting mission on Iwo Jima and was
killed in hand-to-hand fighting when
the Japanese overran his position.

The evils of segregation persisted also
with even legendary African-American
players such as John “Buck” O’Neil not
being exempted.
O’Neil played on nine championship

Despite qualifying
for an exemption from
military service O’Neil
insisted on doing his
part and he joined the
Navy Seabees and was
sent to the South Pacific.
One of the Seabees’
more pleasant duties was
using bulldozers to carve
baseball fields out of
islands from New Guinea
to the Aleutians.
Assigned to Subic Bay in the
Philippines towards the end of the war
O’Neil recalled an incident there in
which he and his fellow soldiers took a
load of ammunition to a destroyer.
“We got there in an LST, and
started sending ammunition up. Then
somebody started blowing “Taps.”
The little ensign on the deck got on
and said, “Attention Niggers!” When
he said that I went up that ladder and
said, “Do you know what you’re saying?

Baseball historian Gary Bedingfield
notes on his Baseball in Wartime
website:
“During World War II, the Japanese

THE DEDICATION OF TRIMBLE
FIELD ON GUAM, TWO MONTHS
FOLLOWING JIMMY TRIMBLE’S
DEATH. OF THE FIELD’S
NAMESAKE, GENERAL ERSKINE
SAID, “HIS NAME WILL NOT BE
FORGOTTEN AND HIS BRAVE
SPIRIT WILL CONTINUE TO
INSPIRE US IN THE TOUGH
BATTLES THAT LIE AHEAD.”

Top:

Bottom: www.baseballinwartime.com

Gen. Graves Erskine had the baseball
field on Guam named “Trimble Field”
in his honor. Before the war began
baseball was, of course, segregated
on the home front and that practice
persisted in the armed services. In their
segregated units the black soldiers,
sailors and airmen formed baseball
teams and leagues just as their white
counterparts did.

teams during an eighteen-year career in
the Negro Leagues (O’Neil later served
as President of the Negro Leagues
Museum in Kansas City and was active
in baseball up until his
passing in 2006).

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AMERICAN VALOR QUARTERLY