When Dan Kwong first dreamed of staging baseball games at the Japanese American concentration camp where his family was held captive during the second world war, he thought of it as an exercise in living history, an eye-catching way to convey the trauma of 120,000 men, women and children who were locked up in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
asserted
who → dream → Harbor
He knew that the wartime internees had played the game not just as a distraction from their predicament, but as a quiet expression of their loyalty to the United States.
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internees → know → States
He wanted to stage an event that would cast the game as an act of resistance, and teach new generations about the damage governments do when they strip a whole segment of the population of their constitutional rights.
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they → want → rights
That, though, was before the second Trump administration brought its own wave of detention camps and mass arrests and made the treatment of Japanese Americans in the 1940s relevant in ways Kwong found both shocking and impossible to ignore.
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Kwong → bring → ways
“It’s not a cautionary tale any more,” Kwong said.
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Kwong → ’ → ?
“Now it’s a call to arms.”
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it → ’ → arms
That rebellious spirit was on full display last weekend as Kwong’s project came to fruition.
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project → come → fruition
After years of painstaking work to restore the old dirt field at Manzanar, the camp in California’s eastern Sierra mountains where his mother and aunt were once confined, hundreds of people watched a double-header featuring players from California’s Japanese American baseball league.
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hundreds → restore → league
The players donned 1940s-era baseball uniforms, gloves and catcher’s helmets, smashed balls into the sagebrush beyond the outfield, and struggled all day with the unusual way the ball bounced and skittered across the grassless field.
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ball → don → field
Kwong, who moves with the athleticism of a much younger man, took the field himself, first for the Li’l Tokio Giants, his team for the past 54 years, and then in an all-star game pitting southern California against the north.
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who → move → north
The crowd, many of them holding up Japanese-style paper parasols as protection against the unforgiving high desert sun, cheered his every appearance.
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many → hold → appearance
Kwong also made sure that the racial animus of the 1940s and its modern-day revival stayed uppermost in people’s minds.
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stayed → make → minds
In a speech delivered between the two games, he connected Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement with what he called the “premise of domination and supremacy” that had made different groups of immigrants and citizens of color vulnerable to scapegoating and criminalization in the past.
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groups → deliver → past
“It is a version of America frozen in time within Manzanar’s fences and here on its baseball field,” he said, still in his team uniform.
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he → freeze → uniform
“When we run its dusty base paths and sit in its sunbaked bleachers, for a few hours the past is unfrozen.
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past → run → hours
And in that thaw, we may face the contradictions embedded in America’s legacy: our welcoming arms and our bigoted rejections, our highest aspirations and our lowest debasements, our cruelty and our kindness, our generosity and our greed.”
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we → face → legacy
“We gather at a time when the lessons of Manzanar have never been more urgent,” the chief executive of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, Ann Burroughs, said.
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executive → gather → Angeles
“The racism, xenophobia and cruelty that made what happened here possible are once again unfolding before our eyes.
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happened → make → eyes
So many of the laws that were used to discriminate against your families and people of color over hundreds of years of history in this country are now being used again.
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that → use → country
”
As the ceremonial portion of the day reached its climax, actors in 1940s clothing appeared on the field carrying suitcases, symbolizing the arrival of hundreds of families, most from LA, in the spring of 1942.
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actors → reach → 1942
The plaintive voice of Nobuko Miyamoto, a celebrated Japanese American singer with a lifelong commitment to civil rights, sang of the Manzanar prisoners’ despair at being behind bars when they had done nothing wrong.
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they → sing → nothing
“When will it ever stop?” she sang, to audible sobs from the spectators, many of whom grew up with stories about the camp from their parents and grandparents.
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many → stop → parents
Among them was Masayoshi Morioka, who first arrived as a nine-year-old and whose grandson Mason was now playing for southern California in the all-star game.
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Mason → arrive → game
“Gramps, I’m going to Manzanar,” Morioka remembered his grandson announcing.
“Whatever for?” he asked.
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he → go → Manzanar
When Mason told him it was for a game, he vowed: “I have to go, for the last time in my lifetime.”
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I → tell → lifetime
For years, Kwong’s baseball project seemed like a charmingly impossible dream.
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project → seem → dream
The field was neglected and overgrown, the work promised to be time-consuming and expensive, and the National Park Service, which maintains the site as a historical monument, had reservations about allowing an outsider to oversee it and bring in large crowds once he was done.
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he → neglect → crowds
Kwong, though, never wavered.
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Kwong → waver → ?
He raised the funds and won over the park rangers.
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He → raise → rangers
For the past three years, he has made the 225-mile (360km) drive from LA as often as possible – sometimes accompanied by volunteers, sometimes alone – to clear the foliage and tumbleweeds, smooth out the rough terrain, excavate the outfield posts, erect a fence and bleachers, and build an announcer’s booth.
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he → make → booth
He first staged a game at Manzanar in 2024, but the public was not allowed in and he called it his “soft opening”.
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he → stag → it
A year later, a federal government shutdown scuppered his plans to roll out a grander event.
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shutdown → scupper → event
Then, this spring, a powerful windstorm knocked down the fence and forced him to build a new, stronger one.
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windstorm → knock → one
The park service imposed a flurry of restrictions.
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service → impose → restrictions
He had to arrange offsite parking and a shuttle bus for his spectators, and was told after the announcer’s booth was already half-built that it did not meet government building safety standards.
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it → have → standards
At the games, the announcers – now seated at a simple table beneath an awning – read a lengthy legal disclaimer and warned players they’d have to pause every time a car passed the field, which happened every few minutes.
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which → seat → field
The outspoken politics of the event also appeared to cause official nervousness – understandable, perhaps, since the National Park Service has itself been in the Trump administration’s crosshairs, losing 25% of its workforce as a result of sweeping cuts.
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Service → appear → cuts
The site superintendent, Jeremy Scheier, was not present during the speeches, and Kwong said he’d been told to be careful about what he said as a volunteer at a government site.
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he → say → site
A baseball obsession
Manzanar was the first of 10 camps set up to house the Japanese American population of the western United States – the largest mass incarceration in US history, according to the Manzanar Baseball Project website.
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Manzanar → set → website
The site had once been thriving farmland, filled with apple and pear trees, only to turn arid after the city of LA bought up vast tracts of farmland across the Owens valley and drained the water to spur its own development in the early years of the 20th century.
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city → fill → century
…and 21 more, not listed.
The Aporia
