December 3, 2021
Vancouver Island, British Columbia
I was reminded this morning while reading Walt Murphy's "This Day in Track and Field" that today was the 43rd anniversary of the 1978 Fukuoka Marathon. Forty-three is not a significant anniversary about anything unless it was the day you were born or died, but in this case a glimmer of a memory went off and I thought I had a program from Fukuoka in my hallowed 'stuff'. I dug it out and saw that the 1978 race was indeed run on December 3, forty-three years ago today.
If you take a close look at the top photo you can see that Bill Rodgers, the defending champion, has signed near the top. It is also signed by Anthony Sandoval, Chris Wardlow (AUS 7th) , Lionel Ortega, Len Johnson, Rich Hughson (CAN 10th) and Trevor Wright (GB 4th). Bill Rodgers only finished 6th in 1978, but it was later learned from others that he was suffering from a bout of flu. He did not mention this nor did he use it as an excuse.
The cover photo is most likely from the 1977 race, and in it you can see Rodgers, Tom Fleming, and Lasse Viren, and Kita. I'm not sure who is next to Bill. Number 3 may be Leonid Mossev of the then Soviet Union.
The reason I have this program is that I had been a grad student at the Human Performance Lab at Ball State University from 1977-1979. While there my family lived in married student housing near a Japanese family, the Hirota's, who had children about the same age as ours. We became friends and shared family events and travelled sometimes together to see sights in the Midwest. I remember they were particularly interested in visiting James Dean's boyhood home in Fairmount, IN. I taught the father, Minoru, to drive and sold him our 73, Chevy Nova. He was so polite at four way stops that Hoosier drivers often lined up frustrated behind him.
When they returned to Japan, Minoru, an English professor at Kyushu University, specializing in the Bronte sisters, remembered my running background and bought the program and sought out the runners at some point, maybe before the race and got signatures. He also had a signature of Bill's wife, Ellen, on the back of the program. He carefully hand wrote the results and included those along with several clippings from the local newspapers which you can see below.
When our family was evacuated out of Beijing in 1989 after the Tiananmen Massacre, the Hirota's hosted us in their home in Fukuoka for several days. It gave us some time to decompress after those heady and stressful times and to renew our friendship with them. We still write to each other every year at this time. George Brose
This is a clipping from the Fukuoka paper showing Seko and Shigeru Soh battling it out during the race.
This is Minoru Hirota's handwritten results and mention that Waldemar Cirpinski was 32nd and Jerome Drayton
dropped out around 10Km.
Seko crossing the finish line. from a Fukuoka newspaper
Hi George-
Thanks for the Fukuoka memories; Mary and I attended in 1980, when Harry Johnson brought a AW group that included Sandoval and Ortega ( I didn’t realize they had also competed in 78). None of them ran well. Seko was unbeatable at that time( your newspaper photo shows him ahead of Shigeru Soh , not Kita) We got to go to the post race party representing NIKE which was fun. Also had lunch the day prior with De Castella and his wife, who I had never heard of…The next day we escorted the AW group to Pusan Korea(it’s a very short flight and I remember the RT ticket was $40), where we showed them the Nike factories, where I was working.
I think I have a 1980 event brochure buried somewhere
Take care! Rick
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