As a rambunctious boy growing up in Hiroshima, he was reportedly known as a “gonta,” a local dialect word meaning “mischievous boy” or perhaps something closer to “little hellion.”

Japanese baseball legend Isao Harimoto (1940–2026) sounded a little rueful when, later in life, he recalled his rowdy childhood. Forever getting into scraps, he admitted, almost apologetically, that he had caused his mother no end of grief.

He was 5 years old when Hiroshima was devastated by the atomic bombing in 1945. He fled on his mother’s back, her body covered in blood. A sister six years his senior died from burns covering her entire body.

After the war, his mother opened a grilled-meat restaurant and........

© The Asahi Shimbun