Quotes of the Day
To the average lonely heart, Bobby Fischer—erstwhile chess champion, virulent anti-Semite, and fugitive from the U.S. justice system—might not sound like Mr. Right. But to hear Miyoko Watai tell it, he's a dreamboat. Speaking at a press conference in Tokyo last week, Watai gushed: "I think of Bobby as a king and I would like to become queen." The 59-year-old acting head of the Japan Chess Association said turbulent circumstances had forced her to reveal what she had previously preferred to keep private—that she and Fischer have been living together in Tokyo for the past four years. And now, she says, they want to wed: "We would like to live happily ever after."
That will take some doing. Watai's surprise announcement last week is just the latest odd turn in the bizarre diplomatic and legal drama swirling around Fischer. After 12 years on the run from charges that he broke U.S. trade regulations, the 61-year-old chess genius is fighting attempts to deport him back to the U.S. after Japanese immigration authorities apprehended him on July 13 for traveling on an allegedly invalid passport. That collaring brought to a close one of the most famous (if not particularly intense) manhunts in recent American history.
A prodigy from New York who managed, improbably, to make chess cool, Fischer rocketed to stardom for his aggressive play and flamboyance. In 1972, at the age of 29, he defeated Russian Boris Spassky for the world title in a cold war showdown that made him an American hero. Soon after, however, Fischer's life degenerated from triumph to farce. He joined the fringe Worldwide Church of God, then abruptly left it. He grew increasingly vocal about his anti-Semitic views, despite the fact that his own mother was Jewish. He quit playing competitive chess, and was stripped of his title in 1975 for failing to face challenger Anatoly Karpov.
Then, in 1992, Fischer resurfaced to play a rematch with Spassky in Yugoslavia, where Americans were forbidden from doing business because of its government's support of Serbian aggression in Bosnia.
At a press conference before the match, Fischer spat on a letter from the U.S. Treasury Department telling him not to play. He beat Spassky and pocketed a $3.35 million prize, and a U.S. federal warrant was issued for his arrest. Faced with a possible penalty of up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for violating America's economic sanctions, he has never returned to the States.
For more than a decade, Fischer crisscrossed the globe, passing through Hungary, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Macau and South Korea. By 2000, Japan and the Philippines had become his primary home bases, and he reportedly reveled in the relative anonymity they afforded him. Yet Fischer never truly went into hiding. He traveled using his real identity and passport, and he twice dared to pass directly under the U.S. government's nose. In 1997, Fischer renewed his passport at the U.S. embassy in Bern, Switzerland, and he returned there in 2003 to get 20 new passport pages.
Nor was he shy about using the media to express his views. He made 21 live radio appearances from 1999-2003, mostly in the Philippines. During these spots he would rail against the worldwide Jewish and American conspiracies supposedly out to ruin him, calling the Jews "filthy, lying bastard people" and the U.S. a "brutal, evil dictatorship." When the World Trade Center was destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001, he announced on Philippine radio: "This is wonderful news. I applaud the act ... I want to see the U.S. wiped out."
Watai acknowledges that Fischer is an extreme personality with controversial views, but she asks for special consideration, saying he should be seen as "a special genius who really needs support in order to retain the happiness that he has found." She says she has known him for more than 30 years and, after a long correspondence and several visits, settled down with him in 2000. Their life together has been quiet, she tells Time: they listen to 1950s crooner Jackie Wilson, discuss chess techniques, and eat in most nights. "Our life is ordinary," she says, adding that Fischer is well-suited to Japan. "He doesn't like taking medications or going to doctors. He'd prefer to heal in an onsen. He's very naturally minded."
Watai's talk of marriage plans has aroused suspicions that it might merely be a ploy to prevent Fischer from being deported. But Watai swears it's true love. Likewise, she dismisses as "untrue" recent press reports that claim Fischer already has a wife and child in the Philippines whom he sees every few months. While legal experts say marrying Watai might substantially improve Japan's willingness to let Fischer stay in the country, Fischer's application is now caught in a catch-22: one of the documents he needs to submit to get married in Japan is a valid passport.
It's not clear why the U.S. has chosen to pursue Fischer more vigorously after all these years. Japan's immigration authorities detained him as he attempted to board a flight from Tokyo to Manila, acting on a letter from the U.S. State Department, which notified them that his passport had been revoked in November 2003. John Bosnitch, a Canadian journalist and consultant in Japan who has founded an organization called the Committee to Free Bobby Fischer, says the U.S.'s invalidation of Fischer's passport did not follow due process because Fischer was not properly notified of the action, nor of his right to a 60-day appeal period. As Fischer's alleged crime is not an extraditable offense in Japan, the U.S. is trying to get Fischer back through what Bosnitch calls a "backdoor extradition" via deportation. Others counter that a U.S. passport is government property and must be surrendered upon request. "The U.S. government has the right to take your passport back at any time," says Stephen Givens, a Tokyo-based American lawyer. "Fischer can contest that if they screwed up in the process, sent notice to the wrong address or whatever. But they can go through that procedure again. That's no problem."
In the meantime, Fischer languishes in an immigration detention center in the city of Ushiku, about 50 km from the airport where he was nabbed. Japan's Minister of Justice is expected to rule in the next few weeks on Fischer's appeal against deportation. If the decision goes against Fischer, Bosnitch says his group will launch more legal challenges. They are also trying to get Fischer valid travel documents from a third country, which might prove to be a virtual get-out-of-jail-free card. While requests to a variety of countries for asylum have so far come to nothing, Bosnitch says a German passport remains a possibility: "Because Bobby's father was a German citizen, Bobby is a German citizen. But since Bobby has never asserted that citizenship before, he doesn't have a passport. We are in the process of collecting the necessary documents." A German official acknowledges that Fischer's supporters have started the process, adding: "What we've been presented with so far would not be enough to give a clear picture of his citizenship. It is a very complicated matter."
Miyoko Watai admits she has no idea how this will all play out, and last week she described herself as just a "pawn" in the process. But in chess, she added, it is possible for the lowly pawn to become the most powerful piece on the board—which gives her hope that she may one day get her wish of becoming Bobby Fischer's queen.
- Jim Frederick | Tokyo
- How chess maestro Bobby Fischer turned fugitive and ended up in a Japanese detention cell