TUPAVIEW: PART 2

By Mike Tupa

Oct. 3, 2025

BARTLESVILLE AREA SPORTS

(Note: This is the second of a multi-part column on remarkable people encountered by sportswriter Mike Tupa during his nearly-40 year career.)

I met Robert Torao “Rusty” Kimura in a small but comfy daytime restaurant in Oroville, Calif., just a freeway offramp. Rusty had traveled from his home in Southern California to meet some former Oroville High School classmates — from 60 years earlier.

One of those friends, “Opie” Openshaw, had invited me to lunch to meet Rusty as a possible subject for a newspaper feature.

Before I arrived at the eatery I already had formulated the possible storyline in my mind — an 80-plus-year-old man returns home to visit old high school classmates and teammates and reminisces about sports experiences from 60 years ago. The fact he was a Japanese-American offered a twist — I felt curious to see how he had been treated along racial and social lines while growing up in small town America in the 1920s and 30s.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the extraordinary story Rusty would relate — a story against which sports exploits from most of a century earlier seemed tame by comparison.

Parenthetically, I should point out I’m largely working from memory, especially in regards to my interactions with Rusty. My friendship with Rusty extended 15 years. Long after I moved to Bartlesville, we continued to keep in touch, including Christmas cards and long letters.

My first impression of Rusty was a positive one. Already in his 80s, his smile, alert eyes and pleasant face could have been worn by a man 20 or 30 years younger. I felt immediately drawn to him and his ingratiating personality.

In addition to “Opie,” Rusty, and me, other elderly men joined us around that cozy table. With the idea being I would interview Rusty, I was seated next to him. 

We spoke about his youthful athletic exploits growing up in Oroville. Even though he was the smallest of his large circle of friends, Rusty approached competition with fierce pride and grit. He told me that during a tackling drill in practice, he was accidentally lined up against the biggest boy — who weighed more than 250 pounds, compared to the 120-to-130 pounds that clung to Rusty’s frame. The coach offered to change Rusty’s place in the drill. Rusty refused.

He went against — and took down — the larger specimen. Rusty mastered leverage in becoming a superb tackler, especially in the open field. All other main sports of the era — mainly baseball and track & field related competitions — also became Rusty’s domains.

His boyhood was typically American — even though his parents were of full-blooded Japanese dissent that had immigrated to America. As I remember, he told me he experienced relatively little prejudice from his companions or others. Perhaps in his positive outlook 60 years later time had obscured such things. Or perhaps he told it like it was — the great majority of those he encountered accepted him for the kind of person he was without regard for his ancestry. When “Opie” was given a new sweater, Rusty bugged his own mother until she came up with the $5 to buy Rusty one just like it.

Rusty considered himself a full-blown American boy — with the encouragement and blessing of his father. His father taught Rusty he had to be totally loyal to the country of which he was a citizen.

The finer points of Japanese culture had little pull on the young Rusty. His mother insisted he attend a special school for Nisei (second-generation Japanese-Americans who had been born in the United States) children to learn the Japanese language and customs. Rusty felt little enthusiasm in attending classes and often skipped them in favor of getting up a game of baseball with “Opie” and his other friends.

As a transition to this story, let me go back to the old-time stage gimmick — a sign shown to the audience that said: “Time passes.”

It came time for Rusty to graduate from Oroville High School. This was in the grinding jaws of the early years of the Great Depression. His senior class could not even afford to print a yearbook.

I really didn’t press Rusty about what he did in the years directly following graduation. I believe he worked in the family business or on farms or something like that.

Time passes.

Fast forward to late 1941. Rusty and a handful of Nisei friends went on a hunting trip somewhere in the mountains and hills of Northern California. They stopped at a gas station to fill up. While sitting in the car Rusty heard an announcement that would forever change his life crackle over the radio. The date was December 7, 1941. Japan had bombed the snot out of Pearl Harbor.

Rusty didn’t believe the report at first.

But he and his Nisei friends realized immediately the potential danger of being in public at that moment — especially with hunting rifles piled in the back seat. They immediately took off for home and safety.

But there would be no getting away from the long reach of the government. Within months of the brutal attack on Pearl, Rusty was one of approximately 80,000 Nisei taken into custody and assigned to relocation camps, mostly inland throughout the Western U.S. Two primary reasons seemed to define the action — 1) to try to prevent those of Japanese descent to participate in war activities against America and 2) to try to protect those with Japanese descent from violence by other people.

Like most historical realities, the internment of both Nisei and non-American citizen Japanese was not quite as simplistic as supposed. Not all those of Japanese ancestry, particularly Nisei, were scooped up in a single giant dragnet. 

At first, members of Rusty’s family went to a camp in Utah. But he remained free in an inland part of northern California. 

However, after his mother had died of a stroke, Rusty basically volunteered to go to the camp to be with his family because he felt his brothers and sisters needed him, especially with their father already deceased.

Around this time, the U.S. government began recruiting Nisei out of the camps for military service. Rusty volunteered to join the Military Intelligence Service (MIS), which was seeking Japanese-Americans to serve as interrogators for captured Japanese soldiers.

Like many monumental personal decisions, multiple factors played into Rusty’s decision to enlist in the military. Elements of patriotism, personal pride and practicality all played a role in his decision.

Despite the pain and bitterness of unconstitutional Nisei internment by the government, Rusty still felt an overwhelming love for the country of his birth and for that which it stood for in better times. He told me that he, like thousands of other loyal Nisei, were stung by the idea they didn’t love America.

“We’ll show them who are patriotic citizens,” Rusty summarized about this attitude to join the fight.

But there was a more practical side to his decision. He thought that by joining the military it might make things easier for his brothers and sisters.

So he signed the dotted line and off he went to Minnesota to intelligence school. It turned out to be a grueling, even frightening time, for Rusty as he waged a personal battle to try to pass the course. Learning the language and other aspects didn’t come easy to him — albeit a consequence of him having skipped too many sessions of Japanese culture school as a youth in Oroville. During MIS school he invested most of his waking hours in homework — sacrificing his off-hours — to master the content.

He passed the course.

Now he was on his way to a hero’s duty.

(Note: The third part of this column is planned next.)