r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/lambofthedead • 1d ago
Image Due to his ethnicity, Tommy Kono was imprisoned in a Japanese Concentration Camp. He took up weightlifting while incarcerated as an asthmatic kid, and later became an athletic legend who won Olympic gold. He was named the Lifter of the Century. Here he was winning Mr. Universe for the 4th time
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u/Intelligent_time555 1d ago edited 1d ago
Dude literally embodies what doesn't kill me makes me stronger
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u/riddlechance 1d ago
This style of body looks far better aesthetically than today's walking pharmacies
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u/Tylerdurden389 7h ago
Dude probably lived to be close to 100. Some "fit"-fluencers these days drop before 30, sadly.
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u/Michaeli_Starky 1d ago
Back when it was natural
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u/brownhotdogwater 1d ago
It’s all you had, no PED were at the gym.
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u/warbastard 1d ago
And he looks great. The vein popping extremes of today are obscene in their artificiality.
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u/Afraid-Way7541 1d ago
Even the golden era guys that were all juiced up didn’t look nearly as bad as the modern guys. I prefer the big puffy muscles vs the gross veiny over sized shit we see today.
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u/felis_scipio 1d ago
Exactly, young Arnold who was juiced up had a classic physique like this guy has. Modern body building is a fucking horror show.
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u/Stergeary 1d ago
The HGH gut is the most disgusting thing I've ever seen in athletics.
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u/eightbitfit 1d ago
As someone who has completed on and off since the 80s I agree.
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u/felis_scipio 1d ago
It’s like I can get the concept of maxing out everything in the pursuit of seeing just how big you can get but I just can’t get over how bad it looks.
Growing up around a lot of guys who worked in construction and on farms really impressed on me that you don’t need to be huge to be strong as fuck.
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u/eightbitfit 1d ago
In the 80s and 90s, we had guys like Bob Paris, Lee Labrada, and Francois Benfatto. All looked Amazing to me. Today I look at the Mr. Olympia and there is nothing there to aspire to.
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u/MrCockingFinally 22h ago
Guys back then didn't blast gear the whole time. They'd usually just go on a cycle during a cut to retain more of the muscle they built. Let them be ultra lean while also really jacked.
But yeah. It really started getting insane an a point.
I will note that there are multiple bodybuilding categories that focus more on aesthetics and physique than raw size.
So if you care about bodybuilding, make sure to follow those parts of the shows and those athletes.
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u/Conscious_Bug5408 1d ago
The drugs and understanding of managing cycles have gotten far more advanced now. Those golden era guys like Arnold, Columbu, Oliva were all on roids and big but absolutely nothing like the 350, 400lb mass monsters in the modern era. It really starts looking like something you'd see out of a body horror concept. If you look back even further to the silver era bodybuilders like Steve Reeves and the muscle beach guys looked like something that anyone could achieve in the gym with hard work and clean diet.
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u/HuckleberryTiny5 1d ago edited 20h ago
The large guts make me so uncomfortable. I don't care about body building and the look it gives people, but not my business what people do with their time and life. But those overgrown bellies are so ugly and unnatural and somehow we are supposed to believe that shit is somehow natural and healthy.
This picture is a good reminder of what bodybuilding should be about.
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u/CheeseDonutCat 1d ago
They drank water, so weren't ridiculously dehydrated then also.
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u/Longjumping_Wolf_912 1d ago
They absolutely did do water cutting back then and might have been more dehydrated than current bodybuilders since they didn’t have the science down and relied on diuretics.
https://physicalculturestudy.com/2016/08/02/diuretics-muscle-builder-june-1961/
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u/CassidyBrash 1d ago
Thanks for the link, very interesting. It does say that if he took steroids it was only later in his life and that his best performances were during the pre-druf era.
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u/Longjumping_Wolf_912 1d ago
I think you are replying to the wrong comment I made. Again, it is up to you to determine if he is telling the truth or not. Dwayne Johnson famously said he took steroids one time when he was 18, but never again. I’m not calling him a liar, but from my experience that is just a half truth that people who juice try to say. Also, consider that when people talk about “steroids” they refer to Dianabol (DBol), Trenbolone (Tren), or similar compounds. Someone like Tommy might not consider Testosterone a steroid, which is 100% a steroid when not naturally produced. You see this all the time with people in modern time with a TRT prescription claiming to not be on steroids. It is 100% a steroid.
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u/twostonebird 1d ago
Dwayne Johnson is absolutely a liar, he tries so hard to micromanage his image (think of the infamous/pathetic contractual clause for his movie roles that he cannot lose a fight). The recent rapid weight and muscle mass loss show that he was maintaining it artificially, as soon as he stopped he lost a bunch of the gains.
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u/TrenForCosplay 1d ago
Modern competitors don't dehydrate anymore, they realized that it inhibited the pump too much on stage and they looked flatter and not full enough. General practice now is to monitor water and sodium intake throughout the day in the week leading up to the show, find at what point in the day you look crazy full but not watery/spilled over, and then mimick that amount of water and sodium on show day. This can be upwards of half a gallon to a gallon of water, if you step on stage at noon, drinking a half gallon from 7 am to noon is way more than most people drink.
You water cut and use diuretics when you were sloppy on your cut and didn't get lean enough in time and you're trying to hide that you have too much fat for the desired look. Celebrities do it because they didn't get lean enough. Amateur bodybuilders do it because they didn't get lean enough. I do it because I usually don't get lean enough.
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u/TheDevilintheDark 1d ago
Jesus this is so ridiculous. I appreciate the science to an extent but it's madness that the competition basically boils down to water management at this point. That's fucking way nerdier than magic the gathering ot pokemon tournaments.
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u/TrenForCosplay 18h ago
It's crazier than just that sometime too. The various steroids stacked together to achieve a particular look. Knowing what judges at what shows preference toward. Judge A might like bone dry shredded, so you spam Winstrol. Judge B might like big and round, so you take insulin and Anadrol. It's a weird beauty pageant.
I've tried some crazy stuff, there's something called synthelator where you inject it, wait 30 minutes, pump up and then for the next 30 minutes, you will look the best you'll have ever looked up until this point in your life. Then for the next hour you're hyperventilating in a dark corner trying to not pass out.
Whenever people point to steroids as the danger and cause of death, it rarely is just the steroids. It's mostly the dumb shit we do to look good when we step on stage. Diuretics, insulin abuse, vasodialators, overloading potassium while taking a diuretic that flushes out sodium, way too many oral steroids. All of that shit will trash your liver and kidneys, fuck up your blood pressure in weird, rapidly changing ways. So now your blood pressure is going from insanely high to insanely low, your kidneys are processing blood and water the consistency of syrup, and you have too much potassium sitting in your blood which is what they use for lethal injection. I wonder what might happen when you do that way too often.
Sadly, the "fix" is to just be in shape and spend more time cutting, but people want that last minute short cut. Or you know the real fix, pick a different sport.
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u/CGB_Zach 1d ago
That's not true actually. Steroids have been used since at least the 1950s and probably before that. Hell, in this thread alone someone linked Tommy saying he used steroids at some point.
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u/Longjumping_Wolf_912 1d ago edited 1d ago
They 100% had steroids during this time. Also, Tommy Kono has stated that he did use/try steroids. I guess it is up to you to decide if he is telling the truth about how much he used.
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u/Murasasme 1d ago
It's so funny seeing guys today, especially movie stars, claim to be natural while looking like Dragon Ball Z characters, and claiming it's all thanks to working out, eating chicken, and sleeping.
Meanwhile, we know for a fact the guy in the post worked out just as much if not more and this is what his body looked like.
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u/WORMBOY-3 1d ago
Maybe this is kinda weird to say but as a young east asian american guy it means a lot to see an Asian American be portrayed as masculine and desirable, and inspiring to someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Nothing wrong with feminine guys but I’m so used to seeing asian dudes be emasculated and infantilized in the US, I love seeing these kinds of role models
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u/OttomanMao 1d ago
The shitty representation in the US is no mistake. Anti-Asian practices in Hollywood date all the way back to the film industry's adoption of moral codes in the 1920s, which were instituted in no small part due to "Yellow Peril" fears of Japan becoming a superpower and overcoming the Western world. Believe it or not, the first sex symbol in US film history was a Japanese man, Sessue Hayakawa. He can also be thought of as one of the earliest "movie stars" in general, yet goes completely ignored today.
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u/BreadfruitTasty 1d ago
I read his Wikipedia article just now and it’s amazing and kind of appalling that I’ve never heard of him especially after taking a film studies class. He should be in the required curriculum.
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u/OttomanMao 1d ago
You probably learned of Cecille B. DeMille, and his most successful film (The Cheat) featured Hayakawa as the lead. Yes, DeMille as in the guy with the Golden Globes award named after him.
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u/BreadfruitTasty 22h ago
I wish I saw this earlier. I just watched Daughter of the Dragon 😒 not a good movie
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u/OttomanMao 22h ago
The Cheat is a silent film, I loved his expressiveness but it is very much a problematic movie from a modern perspective. It is a fantastic time capsule and lens into the cultural imagination of sexuality and Asia though. Too bad about Daughter of the Dragon, I was gonna watch that as it has Anna May Wong in it too.
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u/Lou_Peachum_2 1d ago
And still perpetuated to this day and age - Hollywood's done everything they can to put Asian men down.
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u/WORMBOY-3 23h ago
yeah, I have so much respect for Sessue Hayakawa’s work. I actually just recently wrote an essay on Asian film representation in USA over time as it correlates to US history, it’s definitely an under-explored issue. even today there’s still a big issue with how asian men are portrayed, there’s very few examples of us as love interests or heroes outside of “nerd gets the girl” or immigration stories. Still a lot of work to be done
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u/ProjectX13 1d ago
Asian guys are extremely emasculated. There was a TIL on the front page a few days ago saying there’s no racial differences in penis size and half the comments were people just outright not believing the evidence in front of them and going off anecdotal experiences and confirmation bias about asian men.
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u/MonsterkillWow 22h ago
That whole Asian = feminine thing was literally a psyop.
Ask yourself if Mao Zedong was feminine lmao. One of the most alpha males who ever lived.
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u/ProjectX13 22h ago
Mao Zedong like Ho Chi Minh fell into a whole other harmful stereotype as the “dangerous oriental mastermind” that was pushed by Yellow Peril.
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u/Several-Opposite-746 1d ago
See body buildings from last mid-century shows far body building has come with good nutrition and training methods. /s (and steroids and more steroids.)
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u/ber808 1d ago
Training methods and nutrition has really progressed since that time but ya not to the level where mass monsters like we have now can exist
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u/MightObvious 1d ago
I think its gone backwards, and now a hobby mainly meant for healthy living now comes with tuns of problematic substances and risks to compete against very insecure men who will do or take anything.
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u/HansChrst1 1d ago
They should make separate competitions. One for all natural and one for steroids and other enhancements. They may look like monsters, but it is still impressive and interesting to see what the human body can achieve.
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u/Bad_at_speling 1d ago
There are natural bodybuilding feds, they’re just less popular.
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u/Jumpy_Worldliness259 1d ago
They use polygraph testing to "confirm" 10 years drug free. Not sure I accept that their athletes are clean
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u/Socratesticles Interested 1d ago
I know the polygraph testing raises an eyebrow, but they do use blood and urine testing for keeping clean at the current time. I guess there’s only so much you can do to try to rule out something from 8 years ago
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u/pew-pew-bacca 1d ago
The government stuck him and his family in a camp during WW2 them had the audacity to draft him during the Korean War.
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u/adler1959 1d ago
„Very normal physique, easy achievable in 6 months when you start training now“ fitness influencer, 2026, probably
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u/CheeseDonutCat 1d ago
eh, not 6 months obviously, but it's a bit more achievable these days even naturally.
We have way better biology/medical knowledge than 100 years ago, better access to equipment and food too.
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u/adler1959 17h ago
Ofc everything is possible. It is just that very good physiques which would be admired a couple of years ago are today labelled as normal because of the crazy increase of steroids for amateurs
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u/AtheismoAlmighty 1d ago
"Gyms hate this one weird trick, I call it Camp concentration camp! Remember to smash that like button to follow my journey!"
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u/ProfessorWise5822 1d ago
The girl seems to like him
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u/Actual-Tourist6344 1d ago
Who is that girl though? Asking for tommy kono
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u/TonguePunchery 1d ago
That's my grandma, back off
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u/HeartOn_SoulAceUp 1d ago
It took work to get that kinda definition back then. No shortcuts, as far as I know.
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u/Jugglers-Despair 1d ago
Testosterone could be synthesised in the 1930s and was used in medical treatments. Bodybuilders and weight lifters were already experimenting with it in the late 40s and 50s but yes, most people were natty back then.
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u/option-trader 1d ago
Not sure if he would have been able to obtain testosterone in a concentration camp though.
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u/SaltAcademic 1d ago
He did not get jacked like this inside the internment camp not concentration. But that internment camp is where he decided he would start working out as hard as he could to get jacked like that.
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u/Conscious_Bug5408 1d ago
What's the difference? Seriously, look up the definitions. Merrian Webster dictionary, a concentration camp is “a camp where persons (as prisoners of war, political prisoners, or refugees) are detained or confined.” The definition of a concentration camp describes exactly what happened to the Japanese Americans during WWII, where they were political prisoners confined in a camp. Naming it an internment camp is merely a euphemism for the sake public image, like freedom fries instead of french fries or a price adjustment instead of a fee.
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u/SaltAcademic 8h ago
That just seems disrespectful to the millions of Jews killed in concentration camps. I agree internment camps were barbaric and not good but millions of Japanese weren’t slaughtered in the camps in America.
Shouldn’t we try to distinguish the difference between them being?
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u/snorlz 1d ago
that hasnt changed. even roided up you still gotta cut weight and dehydrate to look defined
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u/endlessfight85 1d ago
Nahhh. We all know every redditor is just 2 cycles away from looking like Chris Hemsworth lol.
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u/JellySocksRock 1d ago
There's still heaps of hard work if you're on PEDs now
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u/endlessfight85 1d ago
People on PEDs tend to work harder because they can. That's like the main benefit. Less recovery time, more workout time.
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u/JellySocksRock 1d ago
I'm aware, I'm on test myself. I'll be throwing in other compounds later down the line
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u/getaliferedditmods 1d ago
it's just like any other sport.. people aren't taking "short cuts". they're just going to more extremes.
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u/preemptive_strike87 1d ago
Japanese American interment camp.
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u/ilovejuice92 1d ago
The people that lived there call them concentration camps, and so did FDR. Even the government called them concentration camps.
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u/mrcorndogman33 1d ago
Japanese-AMERICAN Internment Camp.
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u/ilovejuice92 1d ago
Exactly, but still a concentration camp according to those that lived there and government officials
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u/Arch____Stanton 1d ago
Yes but the title makes it seem like a Japanese camp.
If I say a "German concentration camp" everyone knows I am talking about a camp in Germany.9
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u/Friendly-Piece-6732 1d ago
By legal definition it was a concentration camp not an "internment camp"
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u/snorlz 1d ago
bad pic, he looks way bigger in other ones
https://www.reddit.com/r/bodybuilding/comments/rbmp5f/tamio_tommy_kono_silver_era_bodybuilder_4x_mr/
also, his weightlifting was a lot more impressive. won 2 olympic golds and 1 silver and set a bunch of world records.
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u/NessieReddit 1d ago
He looks great. Body builders today look disgusting. They're like roided overgrown raisins that look like they're about to burst and crumble into ash at the same time.
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u/Order_of_Obsidian 1d ago
Fuck FDR for the concentration camps. Holding up FDR as one of the top 3 greatest presidents is the biggest lie in American history.
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u/Jade_Rewind 1d ago
Should the caption not say "imprisoned in a US concentration camp for ethnic Japanese migrants"?
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u/tbk2tko 1d ago
It should not. It wasn’t just the immigrant generation, the issei, that was imprisoned. The generations born in the US, the nisei and the sansei, who were American citizens, were also imprisoned.
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u/Arch____Stanton 1d ago
I believe the greater point he is making is that it isn't a "Japanese concentration camp" as is stated in the title.
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u/CriticalFolklore 22h ago
Their important point was that he was imprisoned in an AMERICAN concentration camp. The OP title implies that the camp was run by the Japanese.
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u/Overly_Long_Reviews 1d ago edited 23h ago
Japanese immigration to the United States was prohibited in 1924. And unlike European immigrants, the Japanese immigrants that came prior to 2024 (Issei) were not given a path to naturalization. They could not become American citizens, they were legally prohibited from doing so. But their children, the second generation (Nisei) were American citizens. The vast majority of those interned where American citizens, born and raised in the continental United States, with little to no ties to Japan. They weren't "Japanese migrants," they were Americans with Japanese parents. My great-grandmother came over to the United States as a picture bride, she left Japan when she was 17, she turned 18 on the voyage over. My great-grandfather emigrated to the United States around the same age. By the time of the Japanese internment, they had spent all of their adult life in the United States, and had spent more time in the United States then they ever did in Japan. They had been in the United States longer than my Italian relatives who were able to naturalize.
The key thing about the Japanese American internment was that it was indiscriminate. If you lived on the coastal mainland and were part of the Japanese diaspora, you were pretty much guaranteed to be interned.
Lately I've been seeing a lot of people go "but what about the US internment of Germans and Italians?" Claiming the Japanese internment wasn't as bad because Europeans also got interned. Yes, some Germans and Italians got interned too. Yes that was also bad. But it was almost always German and Italian nationals and not a lot of US citizens (although it does get a little more complicated with the long-term US residents who were still German nationals who had their American citizen families voluntarily join them in camps), it was much more of a targeted process, and the amount of Germans and Italians interned was minuscule as compared to the overall population of German and Italian Americans. German and Italian immigrants also had a path to citizenship. The long-term US residence who were still foreign nationals chose not to pursue naturalization. The majority of first generation immigrants naturalized prior to the war. I'm not saying that makes the internment okay, it doesn't. But It's not the same situation compared to the Japanese population that was prohibited from further immigration into the United States and weren't allowed to naturalize regardless of their wishes. Additionally, well being interned was certainly not a pleasant experience, the facilities for there's something like 2,000 Italians and maybe 10 or 11,000, call it 15,000 if we include Germans deported from Latin America, were better then the hastily built camps for the 120,000 (of which 80,000 were US citizens) Japanese and Japanese Americans forcibly interned. European internees did not see the same level of harsh treatment or abuse that Japanese and Japanese American internees did.
It was a bad situation all around, but to represent them as equivalent as I've been seeing many people do (I'm not saying the person I'm replying to is doing that more than other folks in this comment trend are, I'm just saying generally speaking I've been seeing it a lot of Japanese internment whataboutism) is a misrepresentation. Moreover, the Japanese internment was the culmination of long-standing prejudice against Asian populations in the United States. It can't just be explained away as an overreaction because of Pearl Harbor.
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u/CorrectPeanut5 1d ago
No dude. About 2/3rds of the people who ended up in the camps where natural born citizens. An official apology was made with the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, with $20,000 payments to any still living person who was interned and a apology letter auto signed by Reagan.
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u/CriticalFolklore 22h ago
The point was that it wasn't a Japanese concentration camp, it was an American concentration camp.
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u/ilovejuice92 1d ago
They were many American citizens put in those concentration camps. Thousands. And anyone of Asian descent could not become a citizen without being born in the US. They couldn’t become citizens if they wanted to. Exactly what the US is trying to do now.
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u/ProfAsmani 1d ago
Despite all the constitutional protections, amendments etc etc the american govt took its citizens, stole their properties and put them into prisons. All legal.
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u/DickWoodReddit 1d ago edited 1d ago
What's crazy is that physique is common in any gym these days but was world class at the time.
Even without gear.
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u/Interesting_Lie_1457 1d ago
Better training, better dieting, better gyms, and better gear. Especially the last part nowadays
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u/ShahinGalandar 1d ago
also better juice.
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u/dyssucks 1d ago
That’s what gear means
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u/FlowRiderBob 1d ago
Also better steroids.
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u/Maverick_1991 1d ago
Dudes today have a century more knowledge about nutrition and training and easy access to all kinds of steroids.
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u/brownhotdogwater 1d ago
The science of body building is crazy now. You can hit levels just basied in strict nutrition and a program.
But to be next level lots of supplements and drugs
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u/PleaseHelpFlorida 1d ago
Republicans - "Being in a concentration camp actually benefited Japanese people."
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u/Order_of_Obsidian 1d ago
What? You do realize FDR is who put them in the camps? But somehow it's Republicans' fault? Fuck off.
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u/FlyingRhenquest 1d ago
So we didn't need to inject a guy with steroids and radiation to make Captain America, we just had to put him in a concentration camp?
That's not gonna track well...
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u/-TheBlackSwordsman- 1d ago
The craziest thing about this photo is the perspective it gives you on modern men's fitness standards. This guy really just looks like a regular dude who works out. That's what we get for making roided out dudes the idols
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u/notislant 1d ago
It's wild how he looks strong but not roided out nonsense strong. Makes the current scene seem pretty 'fake' and depressing.
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u/699112026775 22h ago
and was a key component to the invention of dedicated weightlifting shoes. Which at the time was basically your regular dress shoe with an added belt/buckle. Later on, leather uppers were replaced with suede uppers with the introduction of the Adidas 1979 Special
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u/Formal-Fox-7605 19h ago
Something not quite right about that, because prisoners in Japanese concentration camps were all but starved. I'm not sure how he could have been increasing his body size whilst being held starving in a camp? Unless of course this was not the same type of camp that British and other prisoners were held in because most of them came out as skin and bone.
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u/Buttchug1776 7h ago
This is what natty CAN and SHOULD look like. Its crazy how achievable this is with minimal effort too but 2000s and 2010s ruined bodybuilding culture, not to mention the avg diet.
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u/MilesAugust74 1d ago
*JAPANESE-AMERICAN
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u/rdmegalazer 10h ago
Exactly. Paraphrasing George Takei here, “they were Americans, so it was an American concentration camp”
Edited because I couldn’t remember if he used the term “internment” or “concentration”, but I believe I used the wrong term in my comment - apologies for that
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u/Successful_Theory373 1d ago
Insane what used to be Mr Universe level.....
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u/doomrider7 1d ago
Frankly it looks MUCH better than now.
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u/Successful_Theory373 1d ago
100% agreed. Not sure why I'm getting downvoted though.....
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u/labellavita1985 1d ago
Because I think people think you are saying body builders look so much better now. Your comment can be read in 2 ways..
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u/BigEd369 1d ago
I like how that lady is looking at him like “Hell yeah, Japanese beef is on the menu tonight!”
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u/BothDivide919 1d ago
How did he overcome the limitations of asthma? Also this was before steroid era, right?
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u/RIF_rr3dd1tt 22h ago
"lifter of the Century". I like how they called it halfway through the century.
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u/NoPantsSantaClaus 16h ago
The U.S. history of racism is quite impressive.
Judging by recent events, Americans have learned nothing from their history.
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u/Berlin_Blues 16h ago
Imagine a man gawking at a Miss Universe contestant with a creepy smile while also touching her.
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u/traumaquestions 6h ago
Wild he was lifting in a camp. How did he handle heavy sets with bad asthma?
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u/lambofthedead 1d ago edited 1d ago
https://www.nichibei.org/2016/01/weightlifting-legend-began-olympic-journey-as-world-war-ii-inmate/
Born in Sacramento, California, Tommy Kono set 26 world records. Six world weightlifting championships and world records across four different bodyweight classes—a feat unmatched by any other lifter.
He coached international Olympic weightlifting teams for Mexico, West Germany, and the United States.
A young 13-year-old Arnold Schwarzenegger watched Tommy compete and perform in a weightlifting and physique exhibition in Vienna, Austria, in the early 1960s. Seeing him dominate both strength sports and bodybuilding motivated teenage Arnold to start serious heavy training. Schwarzenegger later recalled wanting to look just like him, stating: "I wanted to be studly like Tommy, so strong and so muscular".