Kamikaze Sailor Rings In Olympics

Attendance is traditionally low at kamikaze reunions.

There are few alumni of that club. Fewer still who plan a second career.

But a former kamikaze works every day at Zenkoji Shrine, the towering, nondenominational shrine that lures thousands of daily visitors up the hill in downtown Nagano.

He is a short, weather-beaten, friendly 69-year-old named Motoichi Godo. He has several jobs at the temple - cleaning, sweeping, serving as a security guard. A lantern has burned continuously for 1,300 years inside the temple, and one of Godo’s jobs is to make sure it stays lit.

Godo was a 17-year-old Navy recruit in August of 1945. He was a seafaring kamikaze. Unlike his more famous aerial contemporaries, Godo’s job was to capsize American ships by ramming them with his own boat. The war ended before he carried out his mission.

Godo is most visible every daylight hour, on the hour, when he walks stiffly out of his office and mounts the bell stand. He takes a long log and slowly guides the end of it into the middle of the temple bell, producing a low, haunting “bong.”

Godo’s fame has multiplied immeasurably. By ringing the Zendoji bell, he officially began the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Winter Games.

“It is good to see all the people here, coming in peace,” he said, through an interpreter.

Soup’s on

Supermarket stock clerks and American figure skating officials, relax. Those soup cans with pictures of Michelle Kwan, Tara Lipinski and Nicole Bobek can stay on the grocery shelves during the Olympics, and the skaters can go for a medals sweep.

Campbell’s Soup was given the OK Friday to keep its advertising campaign featuring the skating stars going through the Nagano Games, avoiding chances of either stripping the 140 million cans off the shelves or seeing the skaters barred from the Olympics.

Campbell’s marketing deal with the U.S. Figure Skating Association, announced last month, ran afoul of rules forbidding all but official sponsors from using Olympic athletes in promotions during the games.

But USFSA agreed to pay the U.S. Olympic Committee an undisclosed amount, reimbursed by Campbell’s, said USOC deputy general secretary John Krimsky. Krimsky, in turn, signed a waiver permitting Bobek, Lipinski and Kwan to compete.

Suckow’s weight may be worth gold

With the Winter Olympics staged in a country whose most revered athletes are sumo wrestlers, it’s fitting that some larger Olympians have a better chance to win.

Japan built the most expensive bobsled and luge track ever, a $90 million behemoth with two uphill segments. This innovation, analysts said, likely will give bulky lugers an advantage: More weight means more momentum on the hills.

Wendel Suckow, the U.S.’s top-ranked luger, is listed at 6-foot-2, 225 pounds. He is the one of the heaviest, if not the heaviest, competitor in the men’s singles.

While Suckow maintains he’s not overweight, you won’t get much dispute from U.S. luge officials that Suckow’s girth, coupled with winning the World Cup here two months ago on the Olympic track, makes him a gold medal contender. He also could be a goat if he doesn’t win the first luge medal in U.S. history.