Chess genius Bobby Fischer has lashed out against what he sees as doubts about
his virility, boasted of being hugely endowed and claimed his incarceration near
the site of Japan's worst nuclear accident is aimed at making him impotent.
An apparently tongue-in-cheek Fischer alluded to an old wive's tale that says
foot span is often seen as an indication of the length of a penis and pointed
out that he wears size 14 shoes.
Fischer, speaking from the East Japan Immigration Bureau Detention Center in
Ushiku, Tochigi Prefecture, was slamming an article in the Aug. 30 edition of
Time magazine in which its Tokyo Bureau Chief Jim Fredrick said the chess
champion's anti-Semitism and status as a fugitive from the U.S. justice system
"might not sound like Mr. Right" to the average lonely heart.
"I wear size 14 wide shoe. Just keep that in mind when you say I'm not a
dreamboat, or not Mr. Right," Fischer said in an Oct. 11 interview he gave a
Philippine radio station and posted on the Internet over the weekend.
Fischer went on to tell a story of a trip he and fiance, Japanese women's chess
champion Miyoko Watai, took to a hot spring resort in Japan some years ago.
Fischer said that he and Watai normally only go to first class hotels and bathe
there in privacy, but occasionally use public facilities for variety.
On one such occasion, Watai had finished soaking in the therapeutic waters and
was waiting in the lobby for him to come out of the men's section of the spring
they had visited.
While there, Watai overhead a conversation "between two Japanese geezers," as
Fischer referred to them, who had been marveling over the enormity of the male
organ they spotted on a fellow bather.
When Fischer walked out of the hot spring's change room, the two men apparently
pointed at the chess genius, said simultaneously, "Hey, that's him," to indicate
who they had been talking about, and caused much embarrassment for his lover,
Watai, the grandmaster said.
"This is an absolutely true story," Fischer said. "And it ties in with this
nuclear radiation here. This can affect your potency. They want to make me
impotent."
Fischer believes that Ushiku's proximity to Tokai, scene of Japan's worst-ever
nuclear accident following a critical reaction at a plant in 1999, makes him
susceptible to the effects of leaked radiation. Ushiku is about 50 kilometers
from Tokai, where the government has deemed radiation levels are fit for human
habitation. Fischer said repeated requests for a transfer and provisional
release, the Japanese equivalent of bail, have been rejected.
Fischer is in the Ushiku detention center while he fights a deportation order
issued Aug. 24. The Tokyo District Court granted an injunction against the
execution of the order on Sept. 8. His American lawyer is due to speak about the
case at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan in Tokyo on Monday afternoon.
Fischer is wanted in the U.S. for playing chess in Yugoslavia in 1992 when that
country was being subjected to international sanctions.
A grand jury in the U.S. indicted him later the same year. He faces up to 10
years imprisonment and a fine of 250,000 dollars if convicted.
Fischer, who won the World Chess Championship in 1972 by defeating then Soviet
Boris Spassky in a match that captivated much of the world and made him a hero
in the United States, also spoke of his dreams for the future.
"I hope to get out of here alive and in good physical condition, before the
radiation poisoning takes its hold on me. And I want to play Fischer Random
(chess). And I want to complete my high tech 'dream clock' and play with it,"
Fischer said. "I still have a lot of ambitions on and off the chessboard." (By
Ryann Connell, Mainichi Daily News, Oct. 18, 2004)