The number of college football players of Asian and Pacific Islander ancestry was quite limited before 1920, but here is the story of some pioneering players.
A little after that time in the mid-1920s Texas A&M had a back named Taro Kishi, who was born in Japan but moved with his family to the U.S. and settled in Texas at a young age. He had a much younger cousin named Jim Kishi, who was born in southeast Texas and was a letterman with the Texas Longhorns in 1943.
Have you ever written about the Hawaiian Senior League, a semi-pro football league that had a few teams in and around Honolulu that played each other and also played the team from the University of Hawaii during the late 1930s and at least into the early 40s? I knew nothing about it until last year when I was researching the life of Judson Atchison, a Texas Longhorn halfback (and NCAA long jump champion) who played for a Honolulu semi-pro team in that league for a few seasons and had Jackie Robinson as a teammate on one of them.
In the day of the Yale Frosh-Soph melee, c. 1858, the name Wang Chung--or similar--appears. Another Chung shows up in '41; John was as fictitious as his school, Plainfield Teachers', which won every game it never played.
Tim Peeler wrote about NC State's (A&M) QB from the 1890's. https://gopack.com/news/2010/9/1/PEELER_QB_of_the_Rising_Sun
Nice and thanks. That makes him the earliest one known.
Awesome.
A little after that time in the mid-1920s Texas A&M had a back named Taro Kishi, who was born in Japan but moved with his family to the U.S. and settled in Texas at a young age. He had a much younger cousin named Jim Kishi, who was born in southeast Texas and was a letterman with the Texas Longhorns in 1943.
Have you ever written about the Hawaiian Senior League, a semi-pro football league that had a few teams in and around Honolulu that played each other and also played the team from the University of Hawaii during the late 1930s and at least into the early 40s? I knew nothing about it until last year when I was researching the life of Judson Atchison, a Texas Longhorn halfback (and NCAA long jump champion) who played for a Honolulu semi-pro team in that league for a few seasons and had Jackie Robinson as a teammate on one of them.
https://open.substack.com/pub/texasandlonghornhistory/p/judson-atchison-texas-longhorns-football-track-long-jump-jackie-robinson
I have not written about the semi-pro league. I've written a little bit about barefoot football https://www.footballarchaeology.com/p/todays-tidbit-the-second-factoid
and Christmas games in Hawaii.
https://www.footballarchaeology.com/p/todays-tidbit-christmas-football
That's about it. I'll check out the Athison article.
Excellent job on the research
In the day of the Yale Frosh-Soph melee, c. 1858, the name Wang Chung--or similar--appears. Another Chung shows up in '41; John was as fictitious as his school, Plainfield Teachers', which won every game it never played.
I searched a bit in Yale, Her Campus, Class Rooms, and Athletics and did not find anything, but I wrote about Plainfield and John Chung, who scored 69 points in Plainfield's first six games here: https://www.footballarchaeology.com/p/todays-tidbit-plainfield-teachers
"Sneeze" Achiu....obvious.