Issue date: 12/1/06 Section: News

Media Credit: AP Photo Chess legend Bobby Fischer waves as he leaves Japan at New Tokyo International Airport, near Tokyo, after being freed after nearly nine months in detention for trying to leave Japan using an invalid U.S. passport.

DOHA, Qatar (AP) - Bobby Fischer is still living the quiet life in Iceland, the home he adopted after being held in Japanese custody for nearly a year. He still refuses to play chess, at least the version that everybody else plays. And he's still a wanted man, as far as the U.S. government is concerned.

Beyond that, there are many things the world may never know about the reclusive chess icon. Miyoko Watai, Fischer's longtime companion, says she isn't going to break the silence.

"I prefer not to talk about private things," said Watai, who is in Qatar to manage Japan's chess team at the Asian Games.

Watai got swept up in the Fischer saga after he was detained, "kidnapped" is the word she and Fischer use, by Japanese authorities at Tokyo's Narita airport in July 2004. He ended up staying in a Japanese immigration detention center for nine months fighting extradition to the United States before fleeing with Watai to Iceland.

While he was in Japanese custody, Fischer and Watai, who is also head of the Japan chess association, got engaged. At a news conference before leaving Japan, she denied allegations the engagement was a ploy to confound Japanese immigration officials.

So did they ever tie the knot?

"I'd rather not say," Watai said Thursday in a rare interview with The Associated Press. "I live in Japan now. But I go back and forth."

She does not hesitate, however, to say how bitter she remains over the way Fischer was treated.

"It's very sad," she said. "He can't travel anywhere. He's still on their list. He can't go back."

The Chicago-born, Brooklyn, N.Y.-bred Fischer is wanted in the United States for playing a 1992 rematch against Cold War rival Boris Spassky in Yugoslavia in defiance of international sanctions.

The American chess champion at 14 and a grand master at 15, Fischer became an icon when he dethroned the Soviet Union's Spassky in 1972 in a series of games in Iceland to claim America's first world chess championship in more than a century. But his reputation as a genius of chess soon was eclipsed for many by his idiosyncrasies.

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools