{"id":803285,"date":"2026-09-12T16:39:47","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T16:39:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/803285\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T16:39:47","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T16:39:47","slug":"japan-baseball-great-and-atomic-bomb-survivor-isao-harimoto-dies-aged-86-baseball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/803285\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan baseball great and atomic bomb survivor Isao Harimoto dies aged 86 | Baseball"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"article__subhead\">Harimoto, whose record 3,085 career hits still stands, was inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame in 1990.<\/p>\n<p>Published On 10 Sep 202610 Sep 2026<\/p>\n<p>Japanese baseball legend Isao Harimoto, who survived the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2025\/8\/6\/japans-hiroshima-marks-80-years-since-us-atomic-bombing\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">atomic bombing of Hiroshima<\/a> and became the first player from his country to reach 3,000 hits, has died aged 86, reports said.<\/p>\n<p>Born to Korean parents in Japan, Harimoto learned to play left-handed when an accident at the age of four left him with severe burns and limited mobility in his right hand.<\/p>\n<p>Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list<\/p>\n<p>He survived the atomic bombing as a five-year-old, his mother jumping in front of him and his sister to shield them from the blast.<\/p>\n<p>He went on to rack up 3,085 career hits, which still stand as a record in Nippon Professional Baseball.<\/p>\n<p>He played for several teams in Japan, including the all-powerful Yomiuri Giants, and earned himself the nickname \u201cHit Machine\u201d for his batting prowess.<\/p>\n<p>He retired in 1981 after 23 professional seasons and worked as a TV commentator.<\/p>\n<p>Harimoto was inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame in 1990.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Harimoto, whose record 3,085 career hits still stands, was inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":803286,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2302],"tags":[6982,5,2372,2353,2352,302],"class_list":["post-803285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-npb","tag-asia-pacific","tag-baseball","tag-japan","tag-nippon-professional-baseball","tag-npb","tag-sport"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117259064034827147","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/803286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}