Fumiaki Kadota

I think he may be referring to 西南学院大学 (Japanese Wikipedia) which is Seinan Gakuin University. Same Kanji, different reading.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the answer! A couple other college questions from japanbaseballdaily:

Yoshio Takahashi is listed as going to Washington University. Do we know if this is Washington University of St. Louis, the University of Washington or some other institution?

Yoshifumi Shimamoto is listed as attending Yokohama Koko University. I can't find out anything about this. Another translation error? I e-mailed Gary about it a month ago and never heard back.

If accuracy is very important, you may want to try to contact these institutions and see if they have records dating back to the early 1930s, perhaps late 1920s.

But if I were a betting man (which I'm not), then I would go with University of Washington in Seattle for Yoshio Takahashi. The reason for that is because he was raised in Hawaii as denoted by going to Mid-Pacific High School, then going to "Washington University" where he dropped out before graduating to return to Hawaii and play for the Hawaii Asahi [Japanese Wikipedia]. Seattle had a large Japanese population before The War, something I'd never heard of regarding St. Louis. Since Takahashi joined the initial Japanese professional league with Nagoya in 1936, I think that having the Japanese and ni-sei community would have been an important point for him after leaving Hawaii.

Nonetheless, for accuracy sake, it would be best to sent a letter to the admissions office of the University of Washington in Seattle, explaining that you are doing research and would like to confirm that Yoshio Takahashi went there for a short time most likely in the early 1930s.

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I found Yoshifumi Shimamoto on a list of Yokohama National University alumni (Japanese Wikipedia), with the notation that he graduated when it was Yokohama Higher School of Engineering (横浜高等工業学校 - established in 1920, became Yokohama National University in 1951).

I've cross checked this one with my Baseball Encyclopedia and Wikipedia, so I'm confident that this is the high school being referred to.

Hope this helps.

I have a copy of the University of Washington baseball media guide, which lists all baseball letterman since the program started. Yoshio Takahashi is not listed as a baseball letterman. Now, this doesn't mean that he didn't go to the University, or even that he didn't try out for the baseball team, but he didn't letter.

I do agree that it's much more likely that he attended the University of Washington in Seattle than Washington University in St. Louis, for the reasons given; that Seattle is much nearer Hawaii, and has a large Japanese community.