LOS ANGELES — As millions cheered Shohei Ohtani’s debut in the World Series at Dodger Stadium, a couple of dozen ballplayers of Japanese descent gathered last weekend on a dusty field 200 miles north.
A small crowd of friends and family watched as amateur teams from Los Angeles and Lodi trotted onto a recently reconstructed diamond to commemorate a time when every single one of them would have been caged behind barbed wire.
A layer stretches on the restored baseball field at Manzanar with the watch tower looming in the background, Saturday, Oct. 26, 2024. The baseball fields at Manzanar were restored to its wartime configuration outside of Lone Pine, California. (Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
The field was at Manzanar, one of 10 camps where more than 120,000 Japanese Americans — the vast majority U.S. citizens born and raised in this country — were imprisoned during the Second World War.
“Manzanar is a monument to failure,” said Dan Kwong, 69, who helped restore the field, organized the game and played first base for his team, the Li’l Tokyo Giants. His mother and her family had been incarcerated at the camp, he said, and “today, we’re trying to respond to the failure by educating people.”
The Manzanar National Historic Site is easy to miss while speeding along U.S. 395 in remote, eastern California. It’s tucked away in the high desert just north of Lone Pine, on the back side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Mt. Williamson, California’s second-highest summit, towers behind it and draws the eye skyward.
The main baseball field at Manzanar, restored to its wartime configuration, hosts players from the Japanese American baseball leagues of California to inaugurate the diamond on Saturday, Oct. 26, 2024, in Lone Pine, California. (Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
On the ground, amid the sagebrush and tumbleweeds, are a few old barracks, a weathered wooden fence strung with barbed wire and a wind-battered guard tower. The tiny parking lot is almost never full.
It’s the sort of place that’s easy to miss and most people wish never existed. Many who were imprisoned there, and at similar camps scattered in out-of-the-way corners of the country, spent the rest of their lives trying to erase the memory.
Mike Furutani, 56, a powerfully built former U.S. Marine and pitcher for the Lodi team, said his uncles were incarcerated at the Heart Mountain Camp in Wyoming. “They never talked about it,” he said over the slap of balls striking leather as players warmed up around him Saturday morning. “I believe it was something they wanted to forget.”
Furutani said he didn’t even know there had been internment camps until he went to college. “Back in the day, they didn’t teach this in high school.”
Dan Kwong stands on the pitcher’s mound at the main baseball field at Manzanar, that has been restored to its wartime configuration, on Saturday, Oct. 26, 2024, in Lone Pine, California. (Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
