During World War II, his parents were placed in a Japanese-Canadian internment camp at Slocan City, British Columbia, where Mel was born in 1943.
[3] When Mel's brother Herb was born in December 1944, the family was living in the Neys, Ontario, internment camp on the northern shore of Lake Superior.
[3] As a youth, Wakabayashi was a teammate of Ferguson Jenkins on the 1956 Ontario champion Chatham Bantams baseball team.
He later recalled, "Since I started playing hockey in pee wees, my coaches really banged it into my head that I was supposed to score the goals, not try to knock the big guys around and end up getting hurt or getting a penalty.
"[1] In a 2002 profile, writer John U. Bacon wrote that Wakabayashi "is perhaps the most unlikely star in the long history of Michigan sports, and surely one of the most inspirational.
"[1] Wakabayashi also played baseball at the University of Michigan and was named to the All-Big Ten Conference team as a second baseman.
However, as one columnist later observed, "5–6, 150 pound Japanese forwards were not in great demand in the National Hockey League.
He won the MVP award and helped the Seibu Tetsudo team remain unbeaten in the 1971–72 season.
Wakabayashi also coached the Japan men's national ice hockey team at several international events, including the 1980 Winter Olympics.
After Wakabayashi's hockey career ended, Tsutsumi hired him as President of Seibu Canada, which owned the Westin Prince Hotel in Toronto.