A lively panel discussion and video screening on Japanese American baseball past and present. 

During the 1940s, baseball was the national pastime of the US, including in America’s World War II concentration camps. Japanese Americans created leagues in all ten camps and the games drew huge crowds, with spectators often standing and sitting on bare dirt under the blazing sun. Baseball was a way for Japanese Americans to find a sense of normalcy, uplift their spirits, and claim a connection to American culture. 

Today the Manzanar Baseball Project is rebuilding and bringing to life the diamond at Manzanar National Historic Site. Artist and Project Director Dan Kwong will be joined by Kerry Yo Nakagawa, Founder, Nisei Baseball Research Project and author of Through A Diamond: 100 Years of Japanese American Baseball; Bobby Umemoto, President, Southern California Nisei Athletic Union Baseball Leagues; Chris Komai, Japanese American sports historian; and Prof. Susan Kamei, author of When Can We Go Back To America?, in conversation about this compelling project, the rich history of Japanese Americans and baseball, and how they came to overlap in this often overlooked chapter of our nation’s history. This new program will also feature footage from the historic first baseball games to be played on the newly restored field at Manzanar.

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Image Credits: “Top: San Fernando Aces at Manzanar War Relocation Center / Toyo Miyatake. Bottom: Baseball game, Manzanar Relocation Center, Calif. / photograph by Ansel Adams.