[/floatl]MercuryNews: Sad story of first Japanese-American jockey rides out of obscurity in 'Kokomo Joe" John Christgau...has a knack for finding obscure sports book topics and making them highly readable. He has done it again...in "Kokomo Joe: The Story of the First Japanese American Jockey in the United States,"...This offering will be news even to the horse racing industry, 98 percent of which likely hasn't heard of Yoshio "Kokomo Joe" Kobuki...He became a phenomenon and a footnote in racing history during the 1940s, caught innocently in a conflict between two worlds he could not escape...Once Kokomo Joe was allowed to race horses instead of exercising them, he became nearly unbeatable...He rode up and down the West Coast, winning several meetings, even though American jockeys conspired to stop "the dirty Jap" and largely failed. Riding low in the saddle, he had a knack for making horses respond...But his timing couldn't have been worse, for World War II had started, and Kokomo Joe was forced to join thousands of Japanese Americans sent to internment camps...more...
