A baseball historian is hoping to increase awareness of how Japanese Americans interned in the U.S. during World War II opened up a “bridge across the Pacific.”
Kerry Yo Nakagawa has documented how detainees of Japanese origin played baseball at their internment camps.
He gave a lecture in California nine days before the 82nd anniversary of the issuance of an executive order by then-U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt.
The directive led to the internment of about 120,000 individuals deemed “alien enemies,” including people of Japanese ancestry.
He explained that there was a time when people of Japanese descent were not allowed to play for Major League teams.
(Kerry Yo Nakagawa / Founder and Director, Nisei Baseball Research Project)
“What if Ohtani-san, Murakami-san, Nomo, Ichiro, Yamamoto-san, now with the Dodgers, could only play baseball behind barbed wire and only for their community? Wouldn't that be a tragedy?”
Kerry Yo Nakagawa has documented how detainees of Japanese origin played baseball at their internment camps.
He gave a lecture in California nine days before the 82nd anniversary of the issuance of an executive order by then-U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt.
The directive led to the internment of about 120,000 individuals deemed “alien enemies,” including people of Japanese ancestry.
He explained that there was a time when people of Japanese descent were not allowed to play for Major League teams.
(Kerry Yo Nakagawa / Founder and Director, Nisei Baseball Research Project)
“What if Ohtani-san, Murakami-san, Nomo, Ichiro, Yamamoto-san, now with the Dodgers, could only play baseball behind barbed wire and only for their community? Wouldn't that be a tragedy?”
◆intern 抑留する、（強制）収容する
◆detainee 拘束された人、拘留者、抑留者
◆internment camp 強制収容所
◆directive 指示、命令、指令
◆deem 見なす
◆alien enemy 敵である国の市民など敵国人、敵性外国人
◆descent 先祖代々からの）血統、家系、系統
◆directive 有刺鉄線