Japanese Americans Maintained Baseball Traditions While Incarcerated at Manzanar During WWII
During World War II, over 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens, were forcibly removed from their homes and confined in ten government-run camps across the United States. This action followed President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066, issued on February 19, 1942, shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The order granted the secretary of war the power to exclude individuals from military areas, which was then applied to Japanese Americans on the West Coast. One such facility was the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California. Despite being surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers and feeling betrayed by their government, these incarcerated individuals maintained American traditions, including celebrating Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July. Within a month of their arrival at Manzanar, they constructed a baseball diamond, and the camp eventually fielded over 100 baseball and softball teams. Baseball remained a vital part of life at Manzanar until the ca...
