A League of Their Own
The AJA baseball league originated around 1906 form the plantation days of baseball leagues. Each ethnicity had their own teams and played against one another regularly. In 1996, former University of Hawaii All- American baseball player Billy Blanchette expressed interest to play in the AJA league. The league however, consists solely of players of Japanese ancestry, a tradition kept for ninety years. Blanchette, a Franco-American, was obviously not of this background while putting the league in a tough predicament. Representatives from each of the ten teams took a vote on the issue and unanimously decided against the acceptance of Blanchette. Through the research that I have found as well as the class information in Ethnic Studies 330: Japanese in Hawaii. I will present both sides of the argument and situation and then analyze it the best that I can. One side of the argument says there is nothing wrong with an organized group gathering together and hang out. Even if they all share the same ethnic background and refuse to let people not of this background in, it displays their way of preserving their cultural tradition. The term AJA stands for Americans of Japanese Ancestry so an AJA baseball league composed of nothing
The divide and control method caused the Japanese to bond even more closely to one another, keeping culture, tradition, and values strong, while slowly but surely gained resentment for the way Whites were exploiting the Japanese and other races. faced nothing near to the treatment of Japanese. The large number of Japanese immigrants called the Gannen Mono, or Issei, first contracted to work on the plantations in Hawaii brought the Japanese to compose a significant portion of the workers. On top of all that, the Japanese were then asked to volunteer for the war to prove their loyalty to the U. All of these activities are ethnic traditions. The other side of the argument is the obvious accusation that refusing Blanchette the right to play is blatant racial discrimination. I doubt the AJA voters took it that vin!dictively but it has to have at least a little effect. Another factor that allowed the AJA baseball league to remain so strong for so long was the fact that the Japanese represented a lager percentage of Hawaii's population. Charles Memminger of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin stated the Blanchette decision, "has a slight aroma of payback for the days when Japanese Americans weren't allowed to hangout in the Caucasian leagues: sports, business, and social. They were held against their will because the U. The players all lived in the same camp, which made it easier to organize events such as practices and games.
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oct 4 96,
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Acceptance Essays
