[floatl][/floatl]Asahi: Son of POW wants to be top dog at Koshien
A son of a former German prisoner of war is stepping up to the plate where his father struck out 74 years ago--selling hot dogs to Japanese baseball fans at Koshien Stadium. Hermann Wolschke, a meat-processing meister, hawked his hot dogs in November 1934, when Babe Ruth starred in a Japan-U.S. exhibition game at the famed ballpark in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture. Many spectators, however, ate only the bread and threw away the sausage. The Sultan of Swat may have loved hot dogs, but a large majority of Japanese were unfamiliar with the meat. Now, Wolschke's namesake second son is bringing back the father's original recipe when a renovated Koshien Stadium opens Saturday...Wolschke's father served as a cook for the German navy during World War I. He and other German soldiers were captured in Tsingtao, China, by the Imperial Japanese Army and detained as prisoners of war in Hiroshima and other Japanese cities. The father, who decided to stay in Japan after the end of the war, first settled in Yokohama and then moved to Kobe following the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake...more...