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Kenny, you can't bowl because
you are a Hawaiian.' |
by David Driscoll
The author is Curator of Business & Technology,
State Historical Society of Wisconsin.
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| Portrait of Kenneth Koji in his Army uniform,
1942. Courtesy of the Kenneth Koji family. |
Kenneth Koji (1917-1981) of Sparta was a better-than-average bowler.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, he was consistently among the top
10 scorers in his local league, with a three-game average in the mid-500s.
He won the 1947 men's singles championship of the Sparta City Bowling
Association (SCBA) with a score of 619.
Yet his skill on the lanes did not keep him from being ejected from
the 1950 Wisconsin State Bowling Association (WSBA) annual tournament
in Fond du Lac. The tournament was sanctioned by the American Bowling
Congress (ABC), which at that time banned non-white participants. Ken
Koji was Japanese-American, born in Hawaii.
Koji described this experience in a letter to the Wisconsin Governor's
Commission on Human Rights. "On Friday night March 10th, I participated
in the Singles and Doubles event much to my content, but on the following
afternoon as I was getting prepared, I was called by my team captain
Mr. Robert Bacon, and he told me, 'Kenny, you can't bowl because
you are a Hawaiian.' " The Secretary of the WSBA, Clarence
Jonen, had informed Koji's captain that the ABC's "whites-only"
rule would be enforced that day. Koji was ejected from the tournament.
Kojiís expulsion caused a statewide furor and prompted editorial rebuke
from Racine to Ellsworth. The Ashland Press called it "a raw case of
racial discrimination." The Milwaukee Journal asserted: "Kenneth Koji,
a good American, is a symbol — a symbol that ought to make ABC
members ashamed of their rule book." And Kojiís hometown paper, the
Monroe County Democrat, charged: "Members of the American Bowling Congress
ought to be humiliated by this outrage perpetrated in their name."
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| Kenneth Koji riding horses with his future wife,
Patricia Hunt, and her cousin, Clinton Hunt, Sparta, Wis., summer
1942. Many of the men of the 100th Battalion socialized with local
residents during their training at Camp McCoy. Courtesy of the Kenneth
Koji family. |
Koji's case garnered so much attention in part because a few weeks earlier,
the state of Wisconsin had filed a lawsuit seeking to ban the ABC from
operating within state borders. Attorney General Thomas E. Fairchild
alleged that the ABC, which had had been headquartered in Milwaukee
since 1908, violated the state's statute against discrimination in public
accommodations. In response, the ABC claimed to be a private social
organization whose membership rules were not subject to government scrutiny.
Opinion was split, with many organizations and institutions favoring
a rule change and many ABC members resisting it.
The Koji case proved to be a public relations disaster in the ABC's
own backyard. So why was Koji barred at such a critical moment? His race
was hardly a secret, and the Sparta City Bowling Association had consciously
chosen to overlook it in granting him membership. Koji was, in fact, a
paid-up member of the ABC and had been bowling without incident in ABC-sanctioned
leagues since 1946. He had even bowled in the 1947 WSBA tournament in
Green Bay.
It seems likely that the expulsion was simply poor judgment. One newspaper
reported that Jonen had decided to evict Koji when he learned that Koji's
team was scheduled to bowl in the same bracket as ABC Assistant Secretary
Frank Baker. Jonen evidently thought it would create the wrong impression
if an ABC official knowingly ignored a rule the organization was seeking
to uphold in court. Whatever his motivation, Jonen could hardly have
picked a worse man to expel. Koji was not only well-liked and respected,
but he was also a hero with a special connection to Sparta.
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| Kenneth Koji between battles, Italy or France,
1944-45. Courtesy of the Kenneth Koji family. |
Koji was a member of the 100th Infantry Battalion, the most decorated
unit in World War II for its size and length of service. The 100th Infantry
was a segregated unit, composed of Japanese-Americans from Hawaii. With
war looming in the Pacific, Koji enlisted in the U.S. Army in December
1940. After Pearl Harbor, the government was unsure what to do with
its soldiers of Japanese ancestry, eventually sending them to fight
in the European Theater. Over 1,300 members of the 100th were sent to
Camp McCoy near Sparta in June 1942, where they trained for six months.
For the rest of the war, the local newspapers paid particular attention
to the exploits of the 100th Battalion. During their stay in Wisconsin,
many soldiers socialized and became friends with local families, and
a few, like Ken, married women they met during training.
Deployed to North Africa in 1943, the 100th Battalion invaded Sicily,
fought its way north through Italy and eventually joined the fighting
in southern France. It prevailed through some notably brutal combat, including
the battles of Cassino and Anzio, earning the nickname the "Purple
Heart Battalion" for its casualties. Koji was one of only 200 of
the original members of the battalion to survive the war.
After such a sacrifice for his country, few in Sparta were willing to
enforce a whites-only rule on Ken. The secretary of the Sparta Chamber
of Commerce summed up local opinion: "The way the people feel here,"
he said, "the ABC can go to hell."
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| Kenneth Koji posing with his children Sharon (standing)
and Ronald, late 1940s, Sparta, Wis. Courtesy of the Kenneth Koji
family. |
Indeed, veterans groups nationally were in the forefront of the struggle
for fair play in bowling. Given the dismal standards of the time, the
military was relatively progressive on matters of race. During World
War II, Army commanders began to realize that maintaining segregated
units impaired their logistical efficiency. In 1948, President Truman
took the first step towards full desegregation by issuing Executive
Order 9981, which called for the end of racial discrimination within
the military. By then, most veterans' organizations had already adopted
their own nondiscriminatory membership clauses, and many of these groups
also sponsored bowling teams.
Even before the Koji case, Wisconsin's American Legion State Bowling
Association had twice urged the ABC to amend its whites-only constitution.
Prompted by Koji's expulsion, the Wisconsin Council of the American
Veterans Committee passed a resolution censuring the ABC for its policy
of discrimination. The Commander of Fond du Lac Amvets Post No. 8 spoke
for most Wisconsin veterans. Explaining that the ABC's policies were
"in disagreement with our organizational ideas and principles,"
he reported "it was the unanimous opinion of [our] membership to
oppose the 'White Male' clause in the ABC rules."
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| Ken Koji and his teammates at the American Bowling
Congress tournament, April 24, 1951, St. Paul, Minn. The 1951 tournament
was the first to be played after the ABC had revoked its whites-only
membership rule. Courtesy of the Kenneth Koji family. |
Koji's story had a happy ending. Just days after he was banned, articles
began appearing in newspapers across the country, indicating that the
ABC was likely to drop its whites-only rule. Facing expensive and possibly
ruinous lawsuits in several states, not to mention negative popular
opinion, the ABC Rules Committee recommended changing the whites-only
rule, and the delegates to the annual meeting overwhelmingly approved
the change in May 1950. Koji participated in the first integrated ABC
national tournament in St. Paul in 1951.
Bowling remained a big part of Koji's life. He continued to bowl in Sparta,
and his teams won the SCBA men's titles in 1952, 1954 and 1955. Koji
won an ABC award of merit in 1958-59 and served as secretary of the
SCBA for many years. The sport he loved had finally come to accept him.
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| Ken Koji preparing to bowl, circa 1955. Courtesy of the Kenneth Koji family. |
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