Last member of historic Japanese-Canadian baseball team dies

The last surviving member of a storied Japanese Canadian baseball team has died at the age of 102 in Kamloops, B.C.

Kaye Kaminishi was a part of the legendary Vancouver Asahi team that played in the city from 1914 to 1941 before being disbanded due to the internment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War. 

Earlier this year, Kaminishi accepted the honour of an official day, dubbed Vancouver Asahi Day, being declared on Jan. 11 in memory of the trailblazing team.

Kaminishi was remembered as someone who loved the sport of baseball but also used it as a way to reach out to others.

During the Second World War, Kaminishi and his teammates, along with 22,000 other Canadians of Japanese descent, were sent to internment camps — a slice of history featured in a Heritage Minutes video released in 2019.

"During internment, he was sent to East Lillooet and the Japanese Canadian internment camp was on the opposite side of the river to the village of Lillooet. It was very racially divided," said Sherri Kajiwara, the director and curator of the Nikkei National Museum.

"Through baseball, through his efforts, there was a coming together ... between the camp and the the white village. And it really went far to heal a lot of racist differences, even right during the height of the internment era."

Born Jan. 11, 1922, in Vancouver, Kaye Kaminishi grew up in Hiroshima, Japan, where he learned to play baseball in school before his mother took him back to Canada in 1933 after his father's death.

In 1939, he joined the Japanese Canadian baseball team as a rookie at 17 and mostly played third base.

The Asahi was a powerhouse on the West Coast during the '30s, winning many league championships during a time when Japanese Canadians faced