Modern theories of strong interactions suggest that baryon-antibaryon forces can be strongly attractive, and manifestations of ``baryonium'' states have been seen in experiments. In light of these new data, we attempt to revisit the Fermi-Yang-Sakata idea that mesons and baryons are bound states of few fundamental ``sakatons'' identified with $p, n, \Lambda$, and $\Lambda_c$ particles. We optimized parameters of inter-sakaton potentials and calculated meson and baryon mass spectra in fair agreement with experiment. Moreover, the same set of potentials allows us to reproduce approximately elastic scattering cross sections of baryons and binding energies of light nuclei and hypernuclei. This suggests that the Sakata model could be a promising organizing principle in particle and nuclear physics. This principle may also coexist with the modern quark model, where both valence and sea quark contributions to the hadron structure are allowed.