Introduction: How We Played the Game: Baseball at Manzanar 1942–1945

In the spring of 2024, while driving home from work, I was listening to the local National Public Radio station when a story caught my attention. It was the story of Dan Kwong, a performance artist living in the Los Angeles area, who was working with park rangers and volunteers at the Manzanar National Historic Site in the California desert to rebuild a baseball field that once drew thousands of spectators to cheer on their teams.

Dan’s mother, Momo Nagano, had been one of those spectators. However, she and the other Japanese Americans attending the games were not ordinary fans. They were prisoners, and their ballpark was surrounded by barbed wire along with towers at the top of which stood guards holding machine guns. This place of residence was a concentration camp, established by the US government after the bombing of Pearl Harbor to detain Japanese Americans out of fear that they might be disloyal to the United States. From 1942 to 1945, more than 10,000 Japanese Americans who had been forcibly removed from their homes were processed through the Manzanar incarceration camp.

In classrooms growing up, I had been educated about concentration camps. However, the camps I am referring to weren’t located here in the United States. They were the Nazi concentration camps that most, if not all, of us think of when we hear the words “concentration camp.” And while those camps were the site of unimaginable horrors, that doesn’t diminish the conditions faced by the Japanese Americans incarcerated at Manzanar and the other nine camps established during the war. The summers at Manzanar were very hot and dusty, while the winters were bitterly cold. Families slept in wooden barracks with bathrooms that had no privacy.

Though these Japanese Americans felt betrayed by their government, they stood strong as American citizens, holding celebrations for Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July. They endured their desert captivity by building community and, in perhaps the strongest demonstration of their American-ness, they built baseball and softball diamonds, at one point fielding more than 100 teams. There were both men’s and women’s teams, several with comical names such as the Diarrhea Nine, an homage to the way some folks reacted to the camp food. The incarcerees held all-star games and a [Little] World Series. It was through the playing of baseball and softball that the individuals confined at Manzanar and the other concentration camps boosted morale and brought some sense of normalcy to a situation that was anything but normal.

Within the pages of this book, which is part history and part baseball, you won’t find names of legendary American baseball heroes you recognize, like Mickey Mantle or Ken Griffey Jr. But you will most definitely find American heroes. People such as Rosie Maruki Kakuuchi, Pete Mitsui, George Tamura, Jim Morita, and Mary Matsuno Miya didn’t just excel at playing ball. They, their families, and other incarcerees excelled at perseverance, having had their lives taken away from them to be detained at Manzanar. They built community in the desert and later, after receiving just $25 upon their release, managed to rebuild their lives.

Thanks to the incredible research and storytelling of the SABR members who joined me on this project, including several who had the unique experience of connecting with family members of those held at Manzanar, you will get to read about these special individuals. The games they played, the lives they led, the circumstances they were forced into, and the community they made for themselves. You will see some of their faces and you will come to understand how they played the game.

The authors of this book would also like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to Manzanar Historic National Site Park Ranger Sarah Bone for helping to connect us to the many resources used to tell these important stories, while educating us all in the process.

The authors of this book would also like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to Manzanar Historic National Site Park Ranger Sarah Bone for helping to connect us to the many resources used to tell these important stories, while educating us all in the process.

RUSS SPEILLER has been a SABR member since 2023 and could not be more grateful to the writers, editors, and consultants who contributed to this book. Having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Chemical Engineering, Russ lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, with his incredible family. He has contributed to numerous SABR books, the BioProject, and Turnstyle magazine. This is his first time leading the construction of a SABR book and he is appreciative of the SABR publications board for choosing to greenlight this effort. He really hopes you all enjoy and learn from How We Played the Game. To read more of Russ’ work, please visit russspeiller.substack.com.

• E-book: Click here to download the e-book version of How We Played the Game: Baseball at Manzanar, 1942–1945 for FREE from the SABR Store. Available in PDF, MOBI, EPUB/Kindle formats.
• Paperback: Get a 50% discount on the How We Played the Game: Baseball at Manzanar, 1942–1945 paperback edition from the SABR Store ($14.95 includes shipping/tax; delivery via Amazon Kindle Direct can take up to 4-6 weeks.)
• Companion website: Check out our Baseball at Manzanar companion website at SABR.org/baseball-at-manzanar, where you’ll find more essays and stories, rare photos, interviews, and multimedia clips with survivors of the camp and their families in their own words, plus special coverage of the reconstruction and reclamation of the Manzanar baseball field leading up to a historic doubleheader played there in 2024 and the ballfield’s Grand Opening event on October 17, 2026.