A new short film carved out of the Diamond Diplomacy documentary project.

Stripped of their constitutional rights, their homes, businesses, and dignity, 120,000 Japanese Americans were forced into dusty desolate camps, surrounded by armed guards and barbed wire.

Ironically it was the All-American pastime of baseball that saved their sanity.

Baseball Behind Barbed Wire tells the story of the WWII incarceration of Japanese Americans, through the uncommon yet popular lens of baseball, America’s national pastime.

There is great irony in the popularity of the All American Sport of baseball being played by Japanese Americans during WWII incarceration. Incarcerees had their citizenship and civil rights taken away and the entire community was forcibly confined from 1942-45. And yet, playing baseball invoked some semblance of normalcy under duress. Playing baseball was a chance to assert their citizenship and affirm their loyalty as Americans, even as camp guards in towers pointed their rifles inward and the barbed wire kept them confined. Making the best of a bad situation, camp communities as a whole would get involved, as mothers and grandmothers sewed uniforms out of produce sacks, old clothing, and deconstructed mattress ticking. Some ordered baseball equipment from the Sears catalog, while others wrote to their Caucasian friends back home to get their team uniforms out of storage and shipped to them.

The spine of the film is the story of the Gila River Camp in Arizona, brought to life by a handful of characters that were its primary baseball players. Best known is Kenichi Zenimura, a small but athletic figure known as “Zeni”. He had already made a name for himself in the world of baseball, having even played with the famed Babe Ruth. With the help of his two sons and several other avid young players, they built a real baseball diamond complete with stands and dugouts from pilfered scrap lumber and fence posts. They even rerouted the camp’s irrigation system to cut down on flying dust. Zeni built several ballparks in his lifetime, but his crowning glory was the one in the dusty desert of Arizona surrounded by barbed wire.

The All-American pastime became a favorite for many incarcerees at all ten camps stretching from California to Wyoming to Arkansas. Some of the camps had two or three fields and some had as many as thirty teams, including anyone who wanted to play. They even managed to negotiate permission from government authorities for teams to travel long distances for games at other camps.

In 1945 the internees were finally free to leave, but there was little hope that they could go “home.” Piecing together new lives, Japanese American communities rebuilt, reeducated, retooled, and regained confidence. The concepts of “gaman” (endurance) and “gambaru” (to persevere and keep working hard) are core to the Japanese soul. Baseball embodied this spirit. Decades later, a handful of courageous former internees and their supporters built a movement and lobbied Congress to seek reparations. Finally, in 1988 President Reagan signed a formal apology, and the U.S. government issued reparation checks of $20,000 per survivor. If there was one thread that ran through this unforgiving history, it was baseball, still popular and still shared by America and Japan. The two nations, now friends and allies, will soon celebrate 150 years of the shared national pastime.

Funded by:

The Nancy P. and Richard K. Robbins Family Foundation