Persecuted Since the Day of the Attack on Pearl Harbor When He Was Nine — The Strange Life of Mack Kurihara the Champions’ Trainer
In the early morning hours of January 21, Western U.S. time, Mac Crijala passed away at the age of 90. He was 90 years old, and reportedly died of a brain hemorrhage caused by a hard blow to the head when he fell. Indeed, in the past few years, he showed signs of age-related decline when walking.
In December 1994, Mac was Yakushiji’s chief strategist in the WBC unified bantamweight title match between Joichiro Tatsuyoshi and Yasuei Yakushiji, which drew the attention of all of Japan. I began dating him five years later. Mack called me frequently when I was living in Reno, Nevada, at the time. We once went to a box office near Los Angeles together. I interviewed him many times at a restaurant that served Hawaiian food.
Mack was born in Honolulu on December 4, 1932. He was nine years old when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
I remember that day vividly. It was a Sunday morning. My parents, brother, two sisters, and I were having dinner when we heard a boom-boom-boom outside. We were on the second floor of our apartment building, and when we looked up at the sky, we saw a tremendous number of fighter planes falling into Pearl Harbor one after another. I was so startled that I turned on the radio and heard, “The Japanese are attacking! It’s war! He said. “
After that day, Japanese Americans were placed in a delicate position in American society as “enemy aliens.” Mack, despite his U.S. citizenship, was looked down upon and his human rights were trampled upon.
The next day, American soldiers rushed into all the Japanese American homes and told them, ‘We’re going to confiscate your radios and cameras,’ and ‘Get them out of here.’ When I asked why, they yelled at me, ‘Shut up and FUCK YOU! We were not allowed to use Japanese in public until the war ended in 1945. If anyone found out that we spoke Japanese, they would report us to jail for spying. My parents did not speak English, so we spoke Japanese at home.
Classmates who had been his friends only yesterday began hurling “Japs” and “yellowskins” at him, and even resorted to violence. To protect himself, Mack attended judo and karate dojos.
“I didn’t want to do it, but I was in street fights every day,” he said. I was put in that situation. During the four years of the Pacific War, he did two years each of judo and karate.
In 1946, when I was 15 years old, I started going to a boxing gym. Boxing was very popular in Hawaii at the time, so I was interested. The first week I was there, I got hammered in sparring. I hadn’t even learned how to defend myself, and Hawaiian boxing made you spar first to see if you had guts. The next step was learning technique.”
In 1951, after graduating from high school, Mack enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. It was around the time the Korean War began.
“I wasn’t drafted; I volunteered. In the Air Force, all I had to do was box. I fought 40 fights as a flyweight and lost seven times. But even though I wore the Air Force uniform and visited many places in the U.S., I was scorned as a “Jap” and “Jap” every day. The United States of America is a country full of prejudice. My father told me, ‘Whatever you do, be the best at what you choose to do. ‘ I felt like a boxing trainer for that, and at 21 I started walking as an instructor.”
After being discharged from the Air Force at the end of 1955, Mack moved to New York. He was there to learn the methods of Cas D’Amato, who coached Floyd Patterson, who would later become world heavyweight champion, and Jose Torres, who would win the light heavyweight title. D’Amato is also famous for training Mike Tyson to become the youngest world heavyweight champ in history.
