HISTORY

Japanese people have been passionate about baseball for over 150 years, ever since its introduction to Japan in the 1870s. When Japanese immigrants began coming to America they brought their love of the game with them, passing it on to their American-born children, the Nisei generation. Prior to WWII, Japanese American baseball flourished up and down the west coast in big cities and small farm towns alike. On December 7, 1941 that world was shattered as loyal Americans of Japanese ancestry became identified as "the enemy".

Manzanar National Historic Site was the first of ten major Japanese American "internment camps" constructed in the early months of 1942. Located in the Owens Valley 225 miles north of Los Angeles, Manzanar held over 10,000 Japanese American people. Throughout the ten camps over 120,000 people, most of them American citizens, were imprisoned without due process of law in the largest mass incarceration in United States history.

The camps devastated Japanese American communities, but one aspect of pre-war life they were able to hang on to was baseball. Even through incarceration their passion for the game remained strong. The National Pastime took on powerful symbolic meaning, and the baseball diamond became a sacred space to enact a quintessential American ritual. In the words of Manzanar incarceree Takeo Suo:

"Putting on a baseball uniform was like wearing the American flag."

TODAY

Through its historical re-enactment doubleheader played on Manzanar's lovingly restored ballfield, the Manzanar Baseball Project honors Japanese Americans who found a way to play the game they loved in spite of injustice.

This project is a tribute to the spirit and determination of the Japanese American community, the power of baseball to uplift and unite people, and the importance of safeguarding the rights and principles enshrined in our Constitution.

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  BRINGING JAPANESE AMERICAN HISTORY TO LIFE  

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​​Join us on this journey to preserve, celebrate, and share the unique role of baseball in helping the Japanese American community to persevere through wartime incarceration.