'Talk to my agent' - stories from the Kadena Special Olympics

  • Published
  • By 1st Lt. Joe Kreidel
  • 18th Wing Public Affairs
KADENA AIR BASE, Japan --  Months of planning and thousands of man-hours culminated in game day for the Kadena Special Olympics, held Saturday, Nov. 14, at the Risner Fitness Complex. The event's success was foreordained when Thor himself couldn't help but crack a smile: an otherwise rainy week turned sunshine-and-blue-skies come Saturday morning.
 
For some athletes, Saturday was a frenzy of activity. Kazuki Higa, a precocious nine-year-old with big eyes and a painted-on mustache, started warming up for his 1 p.m. race prior to the opening ceremonies, which were held at 9:45 a.m. Our pre-race interview came to an abrupt end after only two questions when Kazuki struck a sprinter's pose, said "Ok, bye!" and trotted off to continue his preparations.

After the race, Kazuki's aunt - who, along with his grandparents and his Hugger, comprised Kazuki's support crew - said, "He's been running all day. He's hyper always, but more hyper today."

Kazuki's considerable energy propelled him to a fifth-place finish. Thrusting his shiny medal up for examination only inches from my nose, Kazuki said, "It was fun. I did my best, and that's why I got the medal." He added that the mustache gave him special powers. We should all aspire to such clairvoyance.

I'd hoped for a more extensive post-race interview, but Kazuki was more interested in making stories than he was in telling them - after a few questions, he looked blankly at the interpreter and said, "That's really all I wanted to say." When I asked if I should speak to his agent, Kazuki smiled and responded with a simple "Yes."

For others, like 78-year-old Kakazu Kyomatsu, who lives alone, Saturday's KSO was more about community than competition, though he did seem very pleased with himself when he hit a hole-in-one on the last hole of ground golf.

Sitting on the grass in the sunshine, Mr. Kyomatsu, who has participated in the last five or six KSOs, told me his story: how as a 12-year-old his father, in search of a job, stowed away on a ship bound for mainland Japan; how he came back; how, before World War II, his family lived on what is now the west end of Kadena's flightline; how, as a boy living in Kumamoto Prefecture during the War, he ran from bombs ("I saw a lot of metal coming down. It was glittering in the sky..."); how he married at 17; how his bad knees are the result of a fall he sustained while working as a welder in Tokyo; how he spent 20 years away from his family; how his wife passed away seven years ago; how his granddaughter went to America to study and brought him back some American clothes; how the KSO gives him something to look forward to every year.

When I asked him what keeps him coming back to the KSO, he gestured back and forth between the two of us and said, "This. It's nice to have someone to tell your stories to, someone to listen." Talking seemed for him a sort of cairn, a pile of words that realized and honored his passage through time - the passage of his own time.

Of course, according to 1st Lt. Thomas Hanson, Mr. Kyomatsu's escort for the event, the athletes weren't the only ones enriched by the KSO.

"We pretend so often toward the worst sorts of perfection," said Lt. Hanson, whose 22-year-old sister Sarah has WAGR Syndrome and has participated in the Special Olympics in the past. "This brings everything into focus. We - all of us - get a reprieve, a chance to be human."