In The insidethegames Magazine, Tokyo Edition 2021, Philip Barker enlightened readers as to the circumstances and issues around the 1964 edition of the Olympic Games in Tokyo with a banner headline like the one above. So, firstly, apologies Philip, for plagiarising your work. 

In the same edition, Geoff Berkeley wrote about the impact of holding the Paralympic Games in Tokyo in his article "Working to Change Japan". As a Paralympic fellow traveller, the beauty of the Paralympic Games is that it does not have to work hard to bring about change. Its very existence in a country brings about change - social, attitudinal, political, economic, architectural, educational. The list is endless, but the discussion started by Geoff about those matters is for another time.

It seemed appropriate with just a few days before the Opening Ceremony of these equally challenging Tokyo Paralympic Games to remind readers that, in 1964, the second Paralympic Games were held in that wonderful city following the first in Rome 1960.

The Opening Ceremony of the Games was held on November 8 and comprised some 378 wheelchair athletes - 303 men and 75 women - from 21 nations. One of those was the British athlete Caz Walton - or Caz Bryant, as she was then, competing as a teenager in the wheelchair dash and winning gold - who has been involved in some capacity at every Summer Paralympic Games since and will be in Tokyo once more as a staff member of ParalympicsGB. 

Readers might be curious about how an event with so few competitors could run for more than a weekend - the event was actually held over 5 days. In those days, all the athletes were spinal-cord impaired and, as part of their rehabilitation, trained and competed in several sports and disciplines. Even in my own experience in the 1980s as Britain's team manager, I had athletes who competed in two or three sports at a Paralympics.

One heroine of those days was Isabel Barr, who excelled in field events, swimming and pistol shooting. But this phenomenon was not the sole preserve of Paralympic athletes. In the book, Olympic Pride, American Prejudice (recommended), the authors recount how those famous black athletes Jesse Owens, Tidye Pickett, Ralph Metcalfe and others would compete in a variety of distance races and jumping field events in a single day.

As in Rome, those 378 athletes entered Oda Field in their own parade, some days after the Olympic Flame was extinguished. The Games were opened by Crown Prince Akihito and his wife Princess Mishiko. Throughout the Games, members of the Imperial Family attended events, including the Empress. The event was witnessed by more than 100,000 spectators. Change was inevitable. 

Within six months of the conclusion of the Games, the Japanese Government set up a factory for people with impairments. This act might seem inconsequential and perhaps patronising by today’s standards, but in a society (some of which still exist today in parts of the world) where disabled children and people were hidden away or carried on the backs of parents for lack of equipment, this was revolutionary. The Sun Industries, as these growing work locations for this neglected group within society became known, blossomed across Japan.

Ten sports were on the programme - archery, athletics, swimming, table tennis, weightlifting, wheelchair basketball and wheelchair fencing being seven. The other three need a little explanation. Pentathlon was included, but as a Paralympic version, involving five disciplines around archery, athletics, swimming. Then there was snooker, which was a Paralympic sport that prevailed until its demise from the programme following the Seoul 1988 Games. And dartchery - a sport involving archery and a target resembling a dartboard. The reader can fill in the blanks as to how the game was played.

The logo was a dove with five wheelchair wheels in a V shape. Interestingly, the original logo was positioned with the wheelchair wheels in the same arrangement as the Olympic rings to which the International Olympic Committee (IOC) objected, hence the change. This, by the way, was nearly 20 years before the IOC's The Olympic Partner programme and the more vigorous protection now applied to such matters.

The IOC did allow the major cigarette sponsor with its PEACE brand to include within its packaging alongside a range of colours depicting each Olympic sport, a red pack with the Paralympic logo and the word Paralympic - the first time the word was used internationally. 

Of course, in those days, the word could be defined as a combination of the words, "paraplegic" and "Olympic". The IOC did not object to its use, but its adoption by the International Paralympic Committee in the late 1980s was initially a source of contention among the sportsmen and women from other impaired groups who were by then fully integrated into the Games family.

In many ways, this commencement of a series of Paralympic Games post-Rome was similar in genesis to the Olympic Games with a degree of uncertainty. According to Ian Britain's book From Stoke Mandeville to Sochi: A History of the Summer and Winter Paralympic Games, a Japanese Government official named only as Mrs Watanabe was attending an unrelated conference in Rome at the time of the Paralympics there. She was so enthused by what she saw that having met Dr Ludwig Guttmann, promised to return to Tokyo to plead the case for the Tokyo version in 1964. She paved the way for the involvement of Japanese athletes in the Stoke Mandeville Games 1962. The rest is history, Tokyo Paralympic history... thus far!

Most of the participants were from Europe and travelled to Tokyo by two charter planes from KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and Air France which collected athletes from different cities en route. Air France had seen the aisle chair KLM had developed for the easier internal cabin movement of passengers with physical impairments and built its own overnight for its charter.

However, the only solution for accessing the plane was for all participants to be physically carried up the steps and down again, loaded onto buses and carried off at the Village to be reunited with their wheelchair for the first time since setting out. This service was undertaken by the Japanese Defence Force in Tokyo.

The Opening Ceremony took place on a bright November day and the oath was taken by the Japanese swimmer Shigeo Aono. The Japanese Paralympic Organising Committee did a remarkable job with accessibility within the Village as they only received it from Olympic counterparts three days before the athletes arrived. Of course, in the modern Games, the Village is prepared for both Games so any transition is limited to a few of the non-legacy, temporary elements.

Japan won its first and only gold medal of these Tokyo Games in class C men’s table tennis doubles - Yasunori Igari and Fujio Watanabe victorious.

At 5pm on November 12 1964, five days after the start of the Games and more than 200 medal events later, the Closing Ceremony took place, with members of the Imperial Family again in attendance. The Stoke Mandeville Games flag, which was the Paralympic Games flag in those early versions, was lowered and handed to a representative of the Mexican Organising Committee - ironically, Paralympic athletes would never get to compete in Mexico City but in Tel Aviv.

In the two days after the Closing Ceremony, the Japanese authorities put on a National Games for other impaired groups, which was again attended by members of the Imperial Family and was yet a further legacy catalyst for the ultimate incorporation of all impairment groups into. 

It is this legacy, the greater encompassment and integration of disability in sport and life, that we will see once again in Tokyo, nearly 60 years later.