O’ahu – Honolulu: Bishop Museum – Hawai’i Sports Hall of Fame – Wally Yonamine
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Wally Yonamine (born 1925), a member of the Hawaii Sports Hall of Fame Inaugural Induction Class of 1998, a Nisei Japanese American, was a two-sport athlete, who was the first football player of Japanese ancestry to play in the NFL, and the third foreigner to play professional baseball in Japan, and the first American to play there after World War II. Yonamine was a running back for the San Francisco 49ers in their second season (1947). In Japan, he was a member of four Japan four Japan Series Championship teams, the Central League MVP in 1957, a consecutive seven-time Best Nine Award winner (1952–58), an eleven-time All-Star, a three-time batting champion for the Yomiuri Giants. He was the first foreigner to manage in Japan, when he led the Chunichi Dragons from 1972-1977. He was inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame in 1994–the only American yet admitted into the Hall as a player.
The Hawai’i Sports Hall of Fame was first established in 1977 in an Executive Order signed by Governor Benjamin Cayetano. In 2003, Governor Linda Lingle signed into law a bill passed by the State Legislature to confirm the permanency of the Hawai’i Sports Hall of Fame as a self-sustaining non-profit organization and designated it the "state museum for sports history in the islands." Athletes are nominated in chronological order and/or by decade. The first class was inducted in 1998 and selected from among those who distinguished themselves from 1849 -1959, the historical benchmark prior to Statehood. Every nominee for induction must receive an 80 percent approval rating by the Selection Committee and unanimous approval by the Commission. The Hall of Fame currently maintains displays at Aloha Stadium, Honolulu International Airport, and a flagship exhibition at the Bishop Museum’s Pāki Hall, featuring inductee photographs, profiles and memorabilia.
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