“I never thought of baseball as something I liked, or something I enjoyed. I played to make a living.”

It is startling to find Eiji Bando—a man remembered for his sunny, genial manner—looking back on his high school baseball days in such terms in his memoir.

Born in Japanese-occupied Manchuria, in what is now northeastern China, he was repatriated to Japan at the age of 6. Terrified of Soviet soldiers, he trudged along mountain roads, clinging to his mother’s “monpe,” the loose, ankle-tapered work trousers traditionally worn by Japanese farm women.

Even after the family reached his father’s home prefecture of Tokushima, the hardship continued.

“There was nothing to eat, and I slept with only my mother’s warmth to keep........

© The Asahi Shimbun