At the wake for my dad, Mike Cassata, in 2011, my siblings and I displayed clippings of him from the military newspaper, Stars and Stripes. The stories were from the summer of 1966, a time when he played on the U.S. Army Japan Ramblers baseball team, after being drafted in 1965 at 21 years old.
From a young age, I knew my dad was stationed at a hospital near Tokyo, where he cared for soldiers injured in Vietnam. However, he didn’t share much detail about his experience, except that he felt lucky he didn’t have to engage in combat yet unlucky to witness injuries endured by soldiers.
I also knew he got to play baseball in Japan. As a diehard lover of the game, he was a player and lifelong Chicago Cubs fan. Throughout my life, he shared stories of playing in high school and on a semi-pro team out of Portage Park. He also coached his kids’ baseball and softball teams, proving to be our biggest fans.
In the years leading up to his death, he shared more about playing baseball during the war. About five years before he died, he asked if I could contact Stars and Stripes to access stories that mentioned the Ramblers. To my surprise, they sent some. These meant a lot to my dad, so it felt appropriate to share them at his services.
After his wake, while cleaning out his home, my siblings and I found Army letters he wrote to his immediate family who were living in his hometown Harwood Heights. I knew these were a treasure to behold, so I put them in a safe place and occasionally thought about them over the next 13 years. Each time I considered reading them, the weight of the story they told felt like something I wasn’t ready to digest.
Then on March 25, as I watched my son’s high school baseball team play at my alma mater, Lake Park High School in Roselle, this changed. While I stood in the cold rain, cursing the temperatures that accompany spring baseball in Chicagoland, I pictured my dad standing in the exact same spot 30 years earlier, bundled up while he watched me play softball. As a wave of grief unexpectedly moved through me, it was quickly replaced by the joy the game brought him. On my drive home, I wondered more about his time playing in Japan.
When I got home, I read the letters in chronological order. I learned details about his basic training at Fort Knox in Kentucky, time at Fort Dix in New Jersey for Army administration courses, where he was named assistant class leader, and his duties at Brooke Army Medical School at Fort Sam Houston. I also read a moving letter to his parents about being stationed near Camp Zama Japan, at the only military hospital in the Far East.
“When they told me Japan, my heart sank. I want to come home or at least close to home. I wanted to see everyone,” he wrote to his parents. “But the colonel told me that he had been watching my progress and grades and said that my personality is what really determined me for the job. I am really proud that Uncle Sam wants me to do this.”
In later letters, he explained that the hospital cared for soldiers from the Navy, Marines and Air Force who served in Korea, Guam, Midway, Saigon and China until they were evacuated to the United States.
He wrote about playing on the medics baseball team and being recruited by a Marine captain to play second base on a semi-pro team in Yokohama with Marines and Japanese players. “They are in the best league in Japan. He says it is real good baseball. The only reason I got a tryout was because I played semi-pro back in the States,” he wrote to his dad.
The most striking consistency throughout his letters was any time he mentioned the difficulties of serving or tragedies of war, he immediately followed with baseball talk — stats, stories about teammates, encounters with opponents, or questions about his brother’s high school team or Little League program his dad ran.
In a letter sent to his dad after his grandma died, he expressed a doomsday tone. “She lived a long, good life. I (don’t) know if I or Carl or Franny will live to be 81 years old, at this time of the world, it will be a miracle. Life today is disgusting. I can’t see 60 years into the future. I honestly don’t think any of us will see it come. Vietnam is just a stepping stone to the future. The future of what?”
In the next line, he explained how he started throwing a baseball to get his arm in shape.
His last letter dated Sept. 13, 1966, revealed that he would come home 25 days later than expected. After the tough news, he shifted to the one subject that lifted him most — baseball.
“We won the last game in 10 innings on a passed ball. We won 5 to 4. We lost the second one 9 to 7 in a slug fest. I got 3 solid hits, 2 were doubles in left center,” he wrote. “So, I now hang up my spikes, a year I will never forget, and it all happened in the Army!”
Cathy Cassata is a freelance writer who specializes in stories about health, mental health, medical news and inspirational people.
