Daily Life at Manzanar

Incarcerees were housed in rustic barracks organized along 36 residential blocks. Each barrack was divided into 4 or 5 “apartments” offering very little privacy. (Photograph by Ansel Adams. Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

 

The first inmates arrived at the Manzanar concentration camp in March 1942. A total of 11,070 people of Japanese ethnicity were detained at Manzanar until it closed in November 1945.1 No two of those inmates had an identical experience.

“When you get into a place where you have 10,000-plus people, you’re gonna have different attitudes and different situations,” said Paul Bannai, a former inmate at the camp.2 Hikoji Takeuchi recalled that when his family arrived at Manzanar, they felt very anxious and isolated. “My mom just kept telling me, ‘Make the best of it.’ And that’s what we were trying to do,” he said.3

Oral histories collected by the National Park Service (NPS) offer impressions of the challenges of life at Manzanar. However, one cannot assume these recordings represent the experiences of all who were incarcerated there. This is because the NPS tended to hear more from former inmates who were better able to cope with the stresses and pain of incarceration.4

More than 500 crude, rustic barracks were built and organized into 36 residential blocks. Barracks were divided into four or five “apartments”—20-by-25-foot rooms, each jammed with as many as eight people. Each room was furnished with an oil stove, cots, and a single light bulb hanging down near the center.5

CLIMATE-RELATED CHALLENGES

Nearly all of Manzanar’s inmates came from areas of California and Washington state that enjoyed moderate temperatures for much of the year. Suddenly, these Japanese Americans had to get used to a climate that featured extremes—hot, dusty summers and chilly winters. In addition, sandstorms could occur in any season.

Daily life was affected and even interrupted by severe weather. Sue Kunitomi Embrey recalled the ferocity with which winds sometimes blew at Manzanar, kicking dust into the eyes of inmates and staff. “Most of us usually lost our way in the wind,” she said. “We couldn’t find our way back to our barrack or office if we were out at all. Of course, everything stopped. No walking around. No games if we were playing games.”6

During an overnight sandstorm, spaces between the barracks’ floorboards allowed the sand to come up from below. As a result, Frank Kitamoto said he sometimes awoke in the morning to find himself “covered with sand.”7

Intense heat was another hazard of which inmates had to be mindful. A local doctor who worked at Manzanar once stopped his car to caution Embrey, who was walking a long distance along the road. “It was a very hot day, and I had no hat on,” she recalled. “He said, ‘You get into this car because you’re going to have a heat stroke if you stay out there.’”8

Walking long distances within the camp also could be very unpleasant during winter months. Mas Okui was 10 years old when he arrived at Manzanar. “In the winter, it was extremely cold,” he said. “When we walked to school, the ground would crunch from the frozen crust on it. Our feet would be chilblained. Our hands would be red from the cold. Our faces would be chapped.”9

LACK OF PRIVACY

Privacy was an elusive dynamic for Manzanar inmates. The walls between each apartment did not go all the way to the ceiling, and the walls were paper-thin plasterboard.10 “So, if somebody sneezed in Apartment 1, you could hear it in Apartment 5,” recalled Aiko Herzig-Yoshinga. If a family or couple wanted to discuss a sensitive issue, “you had to go outside if you wanted to carry on a confidential, private conversation.”11

Herzig-Yoshinga said the lack of privacy for newlyweds like her was especially frustrating. “Making love on a straw, hay mattress is noisy. Every time you moved at all—crackle, crackle, crackle!” she said, making it “very difficult to have a honeymoon” within the camp.12

Okui said the lack of privacy made it difficult for “young people who were courting. There was no place to go. If you wanted to take your girlfriend somewhere,” he said, a long walk away from the center of camp soon reached “a barbed wire fence.”13

“My best friend and I used to spend every night after supper walking the perimeter of the camp because that was the only time we got any privacy to talk to each other,” said Embrey. “We knew that if we did it anywhere else, there would be someone listening.”14

Latrines were communal spaces that lacked partitions between showers and toilets.15 The desire for privacy prompted some inmates to change the timing of their bathing habits. Women sometimes bathed in the middle of the afternoon because there were few, if any, people in the bathing area at that time.16 Others would try and refrain from urinating until the middle of the night, which made older Issei women quite sick. And some individuals carried cardboard boxes to the bathroom to at least make themselves feel covered when on the toilet.

MEALS

Each block had 14 barracks and its own mess hall where every meal was prepared because none of Manzanar’s barracks contained cooking facilities.17 When the camp opened, a limited number of mess halls meant that inmates typically had to stand in line for 20 to 45 minutes in temperatures that averaged about 90 degrees. The camp administration addressed the problem by creating a staggered system of meal hours until additional mess halls were opened.18

People were required to eat meals in the mess hall closest to their residential block, with students required to go all the way to their “home” mess hall during school lunch. Though, some inmates would skirt the rules and shop around for the food that appealed most to them. Occasionally, this caused some mess halls to become overcrowded.19

Potatoes were a staple food, and meat was rationed. Rice was introduced later to Manzanar’s meals. “We had a lot of what we call ‘slop-suey,’ which was vegetables mixed together and cooked,” said Embrey. The government’s initial attempt at incorporating rice into camp meals was to present it as a dessert. “They would put a spoonful of Jell-O on top of the hot rice, and you would have a real mess,” she added.20

Okui said “the food was awful” during the initial months at the camp. He recalled one evening when he noticed that a “horrible smell came out of the mess hall. It smelled like someone boiling urine, and that was the mutton cooking.” If an unpleasant odor flowed from the nearest mess hall, Okui said he and his friends would choose to eat at one in a different block. “You kind of ate according to what your ‘sniff’ was,” he said.21

Yuri Matsunaga said her family had a standard Plan B when the nearby mess hall served food they didn’t like. “If we didn’t like the food,” said Matsunaga, “we would always make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. That’s what we would pick up.”22

Michiko Wada said the food quality varied significantly from one mess hall to the next. “Like anywhere else, there are some good cooks and bad cooks. Oh, you get the bad cooks, and they’re really bad,” she said.23

 

 

SCHOOL LIFE

Instead of building schools, Manzanar held classes in regular barracks. High school classes were assigned to Block 7 in the fall of 1942. Classes for other grade levels occurred in a dozen recreation halls scattered across the camp. A summer school session was held at the request of parents, worried that their children might fall behind academically.24

At first, furniture and other supplies were scarce. “We had no chairs, no tables, nothing to write with,” recalled Margaret Stanicci, a former teacher at Manzanar.25 Initially, students and teachers sat on the floors. Even by October 1942, there were only enough chairs for two-thirds of the pupils. Students from four different classes gathered in the same barracks. Until partitions were built, students and teachers had to endure the distraction of hearing what was happening in the other classes.26

Textbooks and other books were also in short supply for the first year. Okui remembered this early period as a time when “we had no books, so the teacher would say, ‘You got to pretend, this is this, this is that.’”27

High school summer session classes were held in empty mess halls amid steamy temperatures that ranged from 100 to 120 degrees. When winter began in 1942, there were no stoves in the classrooms. A surge of cold weather, windstorms, or sandstorms would prompt officials to cancel classes.28 Roughly 500 students graduated from Manzanar High School during its three-year tenure.29

Many adults took courses too, starting in the autumn of 1942. Participation in adult programs reached its peak in 1943, when about 1,500 adults enrolled in English language, academic, and cultural classes.30

Students’ academic experiences varied. In a 1944 letter, Masako Nagano wrote that Manzanar schools were more challenging than the school she had attended in Los Angeles. “I can only think of L.A. schools & how easy they were,” wrote Nagano. “Nothing like it here.”31 Taira Fukushima attended high school at the camp and respected his teachers. “I thought they were all pretty good,” he said.32

Wada thought the academic standards in her Manzanar classrooms were high compared to those of her previous school in Los Angeles. “The teachers were nice—very nice,” she said, “and they seemed like they were quite understanding. We never talked about anything to do with race or anything. That was never discussed.”33

WORK LIFE

As a way to achieve constructive distraction from their circumstances as well as to make their collective lives better, most inmates at Manzanar worked in some capacity. Some of them planted and tended vegetables and fruit on small farms, and others raised livestock. Some worked in mess halls, cooking food or washing dishes. Still others dug canals for irrigation or other purposes. Inmates with medical training or other professional training worked as doctors, nurses, teachers, and police officers. Many workers made clothes for themselves or their families.34

Some inmates were permitted to leave camp for short-term agricultural jobs that helped to fill the shortage of farm workers during the war. Working on an Idaho potato farm left Paul Bannai feeling “worn out.” He helped a crew load sack after sack of potatoes onto trucks—and each sack weighed sixty to seventy pounds. Nonetheless, he was gratified at the chance to leave Manzanar temporarily because it “was not an atmosphere that I enjoyed.”35

Some jobs contributed directly to the war effort. One Manzanar farm laboratory produced an experimental rubber for military use, while another workshop created camouflage nets for US military.36 Because the war had disrupted Japanese imports of soy sauce, inmates decided to fill this gap and, with the approval of camp officials, created a small factory to produce it for consumption inside the camp.37

Inmates were paid one of three monthly wage rates based on their skills and the work they performed—$12, $16, or $19.38 For example, Harry Ueno was paid $16 monthly for his job cutting and clearing sagebrush so that more barracks could be constructed.39

DIFFERENT LIFESTYLES

Inmates were permitted to submit mail orders for clothing and other items, and the Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs facilitated these purchases for those who could afford them. As a young teen, Mary Kageyama Nomura noticed that other families at Manzanar “were able to live more comfortably” than her family by purchasing through mail-order catalogs, “but they never lorded it over us.”40

House pets were rare at Manzanar, but Fukushima said his brother befriended a stray dog soon after they arrived. Fukushima’s family grew fond of the dog and became one of the few families to keep a dog inside their barracks apartment.42

 

 

SOCIAL, CULTURAL, AND RECREATIONAL LIFE

Each residential block had a block manager who was elected by inmates.43 The War Relocation Authority (WRA) administered the camp and formed an advisory council of block managers. With the support of the WRA, inmates on these councils established churches, temples, and boys and girls clubs. They developed sports, music, dance, and many other recreational programs. They built gardens and ponds.

The inmates also published a newspaper, the Manzanar Free Press.44 The Free Press included a social calendar and other articles reminding inmates of the upcoming events of social, religious, and athletic groups.45 Bannai said the extensive options for social activities were designed to “keep the morale of the population in camp up, which was good. You had to do that, otherwise it was a very depressing situation.”46

Inmates’ residential block served as their social anchor. Wilbur Sato recalled that whenever someone in his block prepared to leave Manzanar for good, residents held a block party and sang “Auld Lang Syne” to wish that person well. Blocks also organized dances and Christmas parties.47

Social cliques surfaced at Manzanar much as they had existed outside of camp. Some of the camp’s social clubs consisted mostly of inmates who previously had lived in the same neighborhoods. For example, the Manzaknights was a club for Japanese American males started who had come primarily from downtown Los Angeles and the Boyle Heights neighborhood east of downtown. The group had different chapters based on age that planned club activities.48

Throughout the camp, young children played games using almost anything they could find. Saburo Sasaki, who arrived at Manzanar as a boy, recalled how he and his friends collected empty wooden fruit and vegetable crates discarded by mess halls. The boys created a fort with the pieces of wood. Even food scraps became props.

“Every so often, the kitchen would throw out maybe a batch of potatoes because they got too old and they’d rotted,” Sasaki remembered. “Well, we’d go over and get those potatoes and then we’d fight by throwing them at each other from the fort. Then, one of them got infested with scorpions, and that was the last time we played around with forts.”49

Some inmates used their free time to fish along the stream that passed through camp. Noboru Kamibayashi was among those who cast lines into the water, but he was rarely successful. “I tried my luck, but it was no good.”50

Many sports were played at Manzanar, including baseball, softball, football, basketball, wrestling, track, judo, and golf.51

EVENING ACTIVITIES

The lack of street lights at Manzanar meant that outdoor activities came to an end at sundown. Spotlights attached to the guard towers rotated, creating an eerie effect as these pools of light cut through the darkness.52 Evenings were the time for movies, concerts, dances, athletic events, judo class, scouting, religious meetings, and talent shows.53

Music was a prominent element in the camp’s social life. Bruce Kaji, who played the trombone, joined friends at the camp to form a swing-dance band and helped them choose its provocative name, the Jive Bombers.54

Until an indoor space was constructed for movies, the camp showed films on an outdoor screen with no admission fee. Towru Nagano appreciated the outdoor theater because it reminded him of a drive-in theater back in Los Angeles. Outdoor films appealed less to Bo Sakaguchi, who often found the weather too chilly.55

 

Sixth-grade boys enjoy a game of baseball at recess time. (Photo by Francis L. Stewart, War Relocation Authority / UC Berkeley Bancroft Library)

 

WHAT THE DIAMOND MEANT

Like football, baseball and softball at Manzanar were played in the camp’s firebreak zone, which was a sandy, open area without trees or brush.56 Because the entire baseball diamond was dirt, teams would occasionally water the field before a game, so conditions wouldn’t become dusty.57

Inmates took turns driving a dump truck to the surrounding hills to look for decomposed granite, which was placed in the infield, dugouts, and bleacher sections to help prevent clouds of dust during games.58

By the summer of 1942, nearly 100 men’s baseball and 14 women’s softball teams had been formed. For many inmates, baseball and softball brought a degree of normalcy to camp life. This feeling was enhanced by inmates playing under team names that were drawn from the communities that they were forced to leave, such as the San Fernando Aces and San Pedro Gophers. Jim Morita said the typical uniform at Manzanar “wasn’t too fancy.” Players would simply fashion a sweatshirt into a baseball jersey by printing their names on the back.59

The White officials who managed the camp were probably surprised by the skill and tenacity that inmates displayed on the diamond. These officials were likely unaware that the first Japanese American baseball team in California had been organized decades earlier, in 1903.61

Life at Manzanar was difficult for all inmates and deeply traumatic for some. Yet strolling onto a baseball or softball field, or playing the role of spectator, offered moments of solace for many who lived there. “Without baseball,” said one inmate, “life at Manzanar would be miserable.”62 Even getting dressed for a ballgame instilled a special feeling within Takeo Suo. “Putting on a baseball uniform was like wearing the American flag,” he recalled.63

Dan Kwong, whose mother was incarcerated at Manzanar as a child, said, “You could take a group of people, take away everything they have. The way the Japanese American community responded was we’re gonna live life. We’re gonna build gardens. We’re gonna make music. We’re gonna play baseball.”64

GENERATIONAL IMPACTS

Daily life at Manzanar had both good and bad effects on the Issei, the older Japanese Americans who had been born in Japan.

On the one hand, work at the camp was usually less demanding for this generation than what they had faced before the war. Bannai said that older adults “went into hobbies, recreational activities that they were never able to do when they were outside [the camp] because they were seven days a week, maybe, working like blazes to earn a living.”65

On the other hand, a life of leisure was not what every Issei valued. Losing their prewar jobs meant that many members of this generation were no longer doing work that was meaningful and fulfilling.

“In the eyes of an 11-year-old, this was a great time,” said Okui. “We played all the time. We had this whole outdoors. We had dozens of friends. There was never a lack of something to do. For the older people, there was always a lack of something to do…a sense of boredom.”66

The social dynamics of the camp also diminished the stature of the Issei. For example, Manzanar’s communal conditions led many children and teens to eat meals with their friends instead of their parents. Consequently, the family unit lost some of its importance.

MATTHEW JACOB is a member of SABR’s Bob Davids chapter, and he has written multiple articles that were published by Baseball Research Journal. He is also coauthor of Globetrotter: How Abe Saperstein Shook Up the World of Sports (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024). Besides telling the story of how Saperstein formed and showcased the Globetrotters basketball team, this biography explores the key roles that he played in Negro League baseball and MLB’s integration. Matthew is a Detroit Tigers fan, and he lives in Arlington, Virginia.

 

NOTES

1 “Japanese Americans at Manzanar,” National Park Service, Manzanar National Historic Site, accessed August 13, 2025, https://www.nps.gov/manz/learn/historyculture/japanese-americans-at-manzanar.htm.

2 “Paul Bannai Interview Segment 18,” Densho Digital Repository, December 28, 2000, 3:34 to 3:40, https://ddr.densho.org/interviews/ddr-densho-1000-128-18/.

3 “Hikoji Takeuchi Interview Segment 13,” Densho Digital Repository, November 7, 2002, 3:01 to 3:42, https://ddr.densho.org/interviews/ddr-manz-1-10-13/.

4 Sarah Bone, National Park Service, email to author, March 25, 2025.

5 “Camp Life,” National Park Service, Manzanar National Historic Site, Virtual Museum Exhibit, https://www.nps.gov/museum/exhibits/manz/campLife.html.

6 “Mas Okui and Sue Embrey Interviews, Video 3 of 4,” California Revealed, September 11, 1993, 21:00 to 22:23, https://californiarevealed.org/do/a2bff7e2-24f0-4411-90fd-0476cafe23d5.

7 “Frank Kitamoto Segment 16,” Densho Digital Repository, April 13, 1998, 0:27 to 1:00, https://ddr.densho.org/interviews/ddr-densho-1000-35-16/.

8 “Mas Okui and Sue Embrey Interviews, Video 4 of 4,” California Revealed, September 11, 1993, 13:19 to 14:02, https://californiarevealed.org/do/a2bff7e2-24f0-4411-90fd-0476cafe23d5.

9 “Mas Okui and Sue Embrey Interviews, Video 1 of 4,” California Revealed, September 11, 1993, 18:07 to 18:29, https://californiarevealed.org/do/a2bff7e2-24f0-4411-90fd-0476cafe23d5; Mas Okui conjured the term “chilblained” to refer to chilblains, inflamed and blistered skin caused by prolonged exposure to cold, damp air.

10 “Mas Okui and Sue Embrey Interviews, Video 2 of 4,” California Revealed, September 11, 1993, 1:17 to 2:06, https://californiarevealed.org/do/a2bff7e2-24f0-4411-90fd-0476cafe23d5.

11 “Aiko Herzig Interview Segment 9,” Densho Digital Repository, March 20, 1994, 1:23 to 2:16, https://ddr.densho.org/interviews/ddr-densho-1002-8-9/.

12 “Aiko Herzig Interview Segment 9,” 2:49 to 3:23.

13 “Mas Okui and Sue Embrey Interviews, Video 2 of 4,” 2:07 to 2:26.

14 “Mas Okui and Sue Embrey Interviews, Video 4 of 4,” 15:08 to 15:25.

15 “Japanese Americans at Manzanar.”

16 “Mas Okui and Sue Embrey Interviews, Video 2 of 4,” 1:36 to 1:56.

17 “Daily Life,” National Park Service, Manzanar National Historic Site, Virtual Museum Exhibit, accessed August 13, 2025, https://www.nps.gov/museum/exhibits/manz/dailylife.html.

18 “Chapter 10: Operation of Manzanar War Relocation Center, March-December 1942: Manzanar Under the WCCA,” National Park Service, accessed August 9, 2025, https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/manz/hrs10.htm.

19 “Chapter 10: Operation of Manzanar War Relocation Center, March-December 1942: Manzanar Under the WCCA.”

20 “Mas Okui and Sue Embrey Interviews, Video 4 of 4,” 17:35 to 18:16.

21 “Mas Okui and Sue Embrey Interviews, Video 2 of 4,” 6:03 to 8:11.

22 “Yuri Matsunaga Interview, Part 2 of 3,” California Revealed, February 24, 2006, 23:54 to 24:04, https://californiarevealed.org/do/d19f1610-ef9d-4708-a724-b9842f313b7d.

23 “Michiko Wada: Interview Segment 8,” Densho Digital Repository, November 20, 2014, 2:18 to 2:23, https://ddr.densho.org/interviews/ddr-manz-1-162-8/.

24 “Chapter 10: Operation of Manzanar War Relocation Center, March-December 1942: Education,” National Park Service, accessed August 13, 2025, https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/manz/hrs10j.htm.

25 Glen Kitayama, “Manzanar,” Densho Encyclopedia, accessed February 13, 2025, https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Manzanar#cite_ref-33.

26 “Chapter 10: Operation of Manzanar War Relocation Center, March-December 1942: Education.”

27 Mas Okui, interview by Martha Nakagawa, Segment 16, Los Angeles, California, April 25, 2012, Friends of Manzanar Collection, Densho Digital Archive, https://ddr.densho.org/media/ddr-densho-1003/ddr-densho-1003-13-transcript-31ec95a099.htm.

28 “Chapter 10: Operation of Manzanar War Relocation Center, March-December 1942: Education.”

29 Kitayama.

30 “Manzanar,” Densho Encyclopedia, accessed February 13, 2025, https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Manzanar#cite_ref-35.

31 Masako Nagano, letter to Joe Nagano and Towru Nagano, October 14, 1944, courtesy of Joe Nagano, Manzanar National Historic Site Collection, Densho Digital Repository, http://ddr.densho.org/ddr-densho-153-121-mezzanine-4c535a6dfe/.

32 “Taira Fukushima Interview Segment 12,” Densho Digital Repository, August 9, 2011, 0:11 to 0:15, https://ddr.densho.org/interviews/ddr-manz-1-124-12/.

33 “Michiko Wada: Interview Segment 6,” Densho Digital Repository, November 20, 2014, 4:19 to 4:31, https://ddr.densho.org/interviews/ddr-manz-1-162-6/.

34 “Japanese Americans at Manzanar.”

35 “Paul Bannai Interview Segment 22,” Densho Digital Repository, 0:30 to 3:11, https://ddr.densho.org/interviews/ddr-densho-1000-128-22/.

36 “Camouflage Net Factory at Manzanar,” National Park Service, Manzanar National Historic Site, accessed August 13 2025, https://www.nps.gov/places/camouflage-net-factory-at-manzanar.htm.

37 “Mas Okui and Sue Embrey Interviews, Video 2 of 4,” 3:35 to 4:01.

38 “Japanese Americans at Manzanar.”

39 “Harry Ueno Interview Segment 12,” Densho Digital Repository, February 18, 1994, 0:34 to 0:48, https://ddr.densho.org/interviews/ddr-densho-1002-7-12/.

40 “Mary Kageyama Nomura Interview Segment 18,” Densho Digital Repository, July 9, 2009, 0:51 to 2:59, https://ddr.densho.org/interviews/ddr-densho-1000-255-18/.

41 “Noboru Kamibayashi Segment 9,” Densho Digital Repository, April 23, 2019, 9:27 to 10:23, https://ddr.densho.org/interviews/ddr-densho-1000-477-9/.

42 “Taira Fukushima Interview Segment 14,” Densho Digital Repository, August 9, 2011, 1:03 to 2:37, https://ddr.densho.org/interviews/ddr-manz-1-124-14/.

43 “Mas Okui and Sue Embrey Interviews, Video 1 of 4,” 22:21 to 22:57.

44 “Daily Life.”

45 “Social Calendar,” Manzanar Free Press, June 2, 1942: 4.

46 “Paul Bannai Interview Segment 18,” 1:32 to 2:04.

47 “Wilbur Sato Interview, Part 2 of 5,” California Revealed, March 17, 1999, 21:31 to 21:58, https://californiarevealed.org/do/02fcd4b7-c6d4-4eb7-800c-7e971bbb71f1.

48 “Bruce T. Kaji Interview Segment 15,” Densho Digital Repository, July 28, 2010, 0:10 to 1:35, https://ddr.densho.org/interviews/ddr-densho-1000-289-15/.

49 “Saburo Sasaki Interview, Part 7 of 9,” California Revealed, May 4, 2005, 20:03 to 20:48, https://californiarevealed.org/do/2827b834-b55e-432a-ba56-950008c18b80.

50 “Noboru Kamibayashi Segment 9,” 4:27 to 5:52.

51 Kitayama.

52 “Wilbur Sato Interview, Part 2 of 5,” 15:15 to 15:39.

53 “Wilbur Sato Interview, Part 3 of 5,” California Revealed, March 17, 1999, 12:39 to 14:23, https://californiarevealed.org/do/02fcd4b7-c6d4-4eb7-800c-7e971bbb71f1.

54 “Bruce T. Kaji Interview Segment 14,” Densho Digital Repository, July 28, 2010, 0:32 to 2:11, https://ddr.densho.org/interviews/ddr-densho-1000-289-14/.

55 Kitayama.

56 “Mas Okui and Sue Embrey Interviews, Video 2 of 4,” 11:05 to 11:56.

57 Jim Morita, telephone interview with author, March 21, 2025.

58 Kerry Yo Nakagawa, “Manzanar: Family, Friends, and Desert Diamonds Behind Barbed Wire,” The National Pastime, Endless Seasons: Baseball in Southern California (Society for American Baseball Research, 2011), https://sabr.org/journal/article/manzanar-family-friends-and-desert-diamonds-behind-barbed-wire/.

59 Jim Morita, interviewed by Sarah Bone, Manzanar National Historic Site: Oral History Project, July 17, 2023.

60 Nakagawa.

61 Rachel Ng, “The Moving Story of Bringing Baseball Back to Manzanar, Where Thousands of Japanese Americans Were Incarcerated During World War II,” Smithsonian, March 27, 2025, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/moving-story-of-bringing-baseball-back-to-manzanar-where-thousands-of-japanese-americans-were-incarcerated-during-world-war-II-180986312/.

62 “Manzanar Baseball,” Manzanar National Historic Site, updated on October 3, 2021, https://www.nps.gov/places/manzanar-baseball.htm.

63 “Manzanar Baseball.”

64 TODAY, “Baseball Returns to Former Japanese American Internment Camp,” YouTube, November 10, 2024, 1:54 to 2:08, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBjmCfzv_bE.

65 “Paul Bannai Interview Segment 19,” Densho Digital Depository, December 28, 2000, 0:22 to 0:46, https://ddr.densho.org/interviews/ddr-densho-1000-128-19/.

66 “Mas Okui and Sue Embrey Interviews, Video 2 of 4,” 14:07 to 14:23; 15:34 to 15:36.