Photographs Signed

This popular Canadian-born Japanese wrestled under the names "The Great Yamato," "Tor Yamato" and "Toi Yamato," often half of a tag team with "Mister Moto"; at age 43 he was shot and killed at his home in Tennessee; Fong was billed as "Hamako" the servant girl brought by Yamato from Japan, but was actually his wife. Pair of Photographs Signed, each 3½" X 3½", n.p., n.y. [likely late 1950s]. Very good. Original (and certainly the only print) of these deckle-edged glossy black-and-white snapshots taken by an admirer. The first shows Yamato almost full-length at left in wrestling trunks shaking hands with a teenage boy backstage at an unidentified venue (probably Chicago's Auditorium Theatre); at lower right he boldly pens "Sincerely / Yamato" in green ink. The second shows the same teenager at left and Hamako in geisha girl getup at right, the two of them holding up what is presumably Yamato's enormous kimono. Across the bottom, she pens "The Great Yamato's / maid / Hamako" in green ink over a somewhat dark area. This scarce signed pair are accompanied by four unsigned snapshots taken at the same photo shoot -- two showing Hamako posing for the camera and two showing her and the teenager holding up the kimono in various ways. A most unusual grouping and very scarce wrestling signatures.