Abraham Jacob Hollandersky
Abe "The Newsboy" Hollandersky (December 3, 1888 – November 1, 1966) became the second American boxer to win the Panamanian Heavyweight Title when he defeated Californian Jack Ortega in nine rounds in Panama City on May 30, 1913. American congressmen, Naval personnel, and canal workers were among the crowd of nearly two thousand who watched Hollandersky gain victory over an opponent who outweighed him by over thirty-five pounds. The "New York Times" announced Hollandersky's best known win the following morning.
Tomoji Abe
Abe married Sumiko Ohama in 1930. They had two sons, Yoshio (born 1932) who became a scholar and professor of French literature, and Nobuo (born 1948) who became a critic and chief curator at the Bridgestone Art Museum, and three daughters, Hiroko (born 1937), Michiko (born 1941), and Noriko (born 1944). In May 1944, his family evacuated to Himeji to escape expected bombing while he remained in Tokyo; in the same month his father died. In July 1945, Abe removed to Mimasaka in Okayama to escape the intensive bombing of Tokyo and in November, three months after Japan's capitulation, he joined his family in Himeji. In April 1950, Abe traveled to Hiroshima with other writers, among them Yasunari Kawabata) for a meeting of the Japan Pen Club and delivered a lecture on "War and Peace". He continued to be interested in Marxism but in the atmosphere of Cold War was cautious about revealing his interests and political views. Abe returned to Tokyo at the end of 1950. In 1953, Abe stood at the bar as special defender in connection with the May Day Incident of 1 May 1952, when, during the May Day demonstration, a Communist-led group forced its way to Imperial Plaza; in the subsequent clash between demonstrators and police people on both sides were killed and injured. In March 1959, Abe and Kiyoshi Aono issued a written protest against the revision of the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan. Abe was a passionate and outspoken critic of the Vietnam War. In May 1965, Abe, Rokurō Hidaka, a prominent academic and author of "The Price of Affluence: Dilemmas of Contemporary Japan", and Yoshio Nakano, editor of the left-wing journal "Heiwa" ("Peace") protested against the Vietnam War and called for a united anti-war movement. In October 1966, Abe and Nakano called for a strike against the Vietnam War. In March 1968, Abe resigned from Meiji University and, with scientist Minoru Oda, called for a nationwide movement against the Vietnam War. In 1969, on a trip with his wife to Europe, Abe visited Edmund Blunden, his university lecturer.