one [Music] [Music] [Music] we weren't supposed to actually go   beyond that bobar fence but my dad  says I'm going to build a ballpark [Music] there a very difficult time for Japanese Americans  they had to spend 4 years incarcerated in these   camps you know concentration camp with  guard towers Bob wire machine guns pointed   inward they'd see these Brown wind storms  coming towards him the dust storms were so intense I remember had a buire frence  over 6 ft [Music] tall the trauma the   humiliation that most went through the the  denying of your constitutional rights your   civil liberties baseball was a way that Japanese  Americans could find some kind of normaly it's   just astounding that they kept the All-American  Pastime alive even from behind Bob wire [Music] [Music] when you go back into our history you see how  passionate and how long Japanese Americans as   well as Japanese Nationals have uh endured  and loved the game baseball was introduced   in Japan in 1872 by a school teacher named  Horus Wilson so he went to a university there   uh to teach and he brought a baseball bat and a  ball with him to have nine players playing with   one mind it took off like wildfire in Japan  the Japanese feel that it's their Pastime   as as strongly as as we feel it's ours the EA  were fanatical passionate about baseball that   passion that the EA developed as kids in Japan  carried over once they came to America it was a   farming Community guadalupi California there  was a lot of Japanese that lived over there   baseball was played every Sunday father would  pack up the kids then we all end up at the   baseball [Applause] diamond all the immigrants  wanted to prove that they were the best in this   sport putting on a baseball uniform was like  putting on the American flag they couldn't play   in Major League Baseball because of the Jim  Crow laws but the Latinos had their leagues   the All-American Girls The Negro Leagues what we  called the niss leagues they were a to play each [Music] [Music] other however the war breaks  out and everything falls apart after Pearl Harbor the kids will be playing  in the front yard and every morning we would see   this army trucks with a truck Flo of soldiers  sitting on the back of the truck and they were   going Westward we lived in an old schoolhouse my  father was a farmer he was one of the first to   get picked up by the FBI too they accused my dad  of sending the morse code back those days we used   the ous and so seven people living in the house  you could just about imagine imagine how many   times we went in and went out and that's every  time that we did that we flick the light on WE   flick the light off when Pearl Harbor happened the  FBI came and took my father away and accused them   of sending messages to the Japanese submarines  [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] here in Fresno the line of demarcation was  the 99 highway so west of the highway they   would go to Arkansas east of the highway they  go to Arizona our family had to go to Arkansas   incarcerated for almost four years there  are 14 Barracks to a block and I I think   there were about 250 people that living in that  one block I still remember my address block 28 13c when the war broke out I think the  beginning of the 1942 season commissioner   Landis had written a letter to the president  saying that they were considering canceling the   season FDR wrote back and said uh no baseball  needs to continue people will be working   harder they need some sort of enjoyment  or relief or Outlet if you will and so   that's the role that baseball played for the  Greater Community and intuitively when the   incarceration occurred that's one of the first  things that the Japanese American Community   turned to as well there was somebody in  each location of the 10 incarceration   camps building fields and establishing  leagues all the camps had baseball fields known as coach Denny always with respect and love  man strict but [Music] gentle Kenichi zenimura who   was like the father of Japanese American baseball  in California and I used to call him the dean of   the diamond early 1920 he built the pre-war  Japanese ballpark here in Fresno October 29th   1927 bab Ruth and Lou garri were barnstorming  through California and they had scheduled the   game at Fresno's fireman's ballpark they asked  the local community to gather all of your top   players to play with babe in Lou and they split  into two teams zenimura was picked along with   three of his teammates and they played with the  Laren L and they ended up defeating bab's team I   talked with Howard zenima and he was telling me  that on Sunday morning December 7th he and his   brothers were in a uh gymnasium playing basketball  and they went into the game everything was great   and when they came out of the game everybody was  quiet people you know there were murmurs of maybe   something was going on and of course Pearl  Harbor had happened while they were playing   the basketball game life really turned upside  down for the zenir family and really everyone   in that situation he had owned a 50% ownership of  a stud Baker dealership in Fresno and zeni had to   sell his share of the business they lost their  home they had to sell all of their belongings   they could only take what they could carry of  course he brought his baseball gear when the   war broke out we were so scared that anything  that was Japanese you know we kind of got rid   of it 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry were  basically rounded up put into County Fairgrounds   for 6 months while they built the permanent  camps throughout United States when we left   our hometown and we went to the tari fairground  Assembly Center this is what we were confronted   with these were old Stables they housed horses  for many years years but when they found out the   Japanese were coming here they chased the horses  out they shove the Japanese into these horse stables this is just a stship inh Humanity during   World War II Kenichi zenimura built  his second ballp park at the Fresno   Fairgrounds recruits tractors and players  to level out the ground at the Assembly Center then they boarded their trains to go to  the desert wastelands my mom told me the story   that once they got on the train to take a  train ride to Jerome Arkansas there were   blinders on the train so you couldn't see in or  out but she lifted it just a a sco to see the   the uh racists and the bigots with their signs  that said get out of Fresno never come back to   California and so my mom being very concerned  she asked my bachan you know what's going to   happen to us in these camps is it going to be  like in Germany and what the Jewish culture has   to go through she goes oh no no she goes  this is the greatest country in the world   all immigrants have to pay a price we will go and  prove how loyal we are and come [Music] back being   incarcerated was traumatic it was humiliating  Camp life was hard but people tried to create a [Music] community kids went to school people went to work   and they did all the jobs required to keep the  camp running for which they were given very   modest pay I remember my dad as the town plumber  I think he said he was only making about $12 a month this is actually one of the blocks of hila  Camp they had 13 Barracks there was no privacy it   was just like a gang shower you know the the one  that you see in the service I I learned a new word   latrine well the latrine was wide open there was  no [Music] partition zenir went to hila River and   really made a positive impact on the community  where he lived but it wasn't positive at first   he's human and when he got here he was depressed  I heard that he didn't unpack for a couple weeks   one night he was looking off into the distance  beyond the barbed wire and he kind of envisioned   a field out there and he told his wife Kiyoko  that he was going to build another baseball [Music] field Denny Mo field heila Camp finest Pastime 70  years passed [Music] Kenichi zenimura built his   Third Field of Dreams on the middle of a Pima  Indian Reservation with a grass infield grass   Outfield caster bean home run fence from left to  right field they would chalk the foul lines with   flour it was ironically on the outside of the Bob  wire well where were we going to run to there was   2 or 300 miles of desert in every direction we had  about 10 of our young guys that were interested in   baseball start digging what they call Sage burst  on the desert he found a farmer who had a tractor   and they were able to scrape the field and make  it flat we went to the lumber yard and stole some   Lumber 2x4 he took a 300t water line from the  laundry room to the pitcher mound so that they   could water the infield he recruited the camp fire  department to make sure the Outfield was nice and   green the caster bean home run fence looked like  it was rgly [Music] field they had 32 teams and   three divisions just at hila River Arizona camp  director Bennett was very supportive of baseball   at hila River he even threw out the first pitch  for the opening game I think it was mainly the   camp directors how they felt about the game and  how it could promote a positivity and goodwi   towards the internees or the so-called enemy  aliens as you went into the game you would drop in   your coins or whatever you could afford to support  the teams the mothers and the women would take   mattress ticking to make uniforms T furukawa's mom  would make sliding pads I'm sure that most of all   the parents they were worried about the  kids hoping that they don't join gangs I   think that we owe a lot to Howard jura's father he  encouraged all the youngsters to come and practice   baseball play baseball and gave everyone  hope joy and normaly to their life [Music] zenir used the game of baseball to break down  barriers throughout his entire life from 1923   when their anti-japanese sentiment was really high  in California there were signs that would say no   Japanese allowed and and he would go into that  town and try to schedule games and they would play   and eventually over time the signs would disappear  Arizona was very strong with the baseball Talent   the top Semi-Pro team was called the Phoenix  compress team and they were a Negro League team   they worked at a it's called a compress Factory  which is where they process the cotton and he   invited them to come and play but when you think  about the broader picture of what was happening   at that point in time you have this African  American team going into an Indian reservation   to play Japanese Americans incarcerated behind  barbed [Music] wire my grandmother died at the   Jerome Arkansas camp in our culture the Buddhist  culture we cremate our elders that went before   us and they didn't have a Crematory at the jome  market Camp so they sent her body to Hattisburg   Mississippi and a few months later my mother  gets a folders coffee can indicating this was   her mother's ashes so she opened up the lid and  on top of my grandmother's ashes was a piece of   paper that my mom thought it was her name so  she opened up the paper and all it sit on it   was [ __ ] woman and so the uh the inhumanities  didn't even even really stop with her [Music] death around July 1943 Japanese Americans in  the camps were forced to answer the Loyalty   questionnaire basically asked if they were  loyal to the country would they be willing   to to fight for a country where some people wrote  yes yes others wrote no no you're denouncing your   Japanese citizenship for many eay that was their  only citizenship they weren't allowed to become   US citizens so that's why some of them would say  no they called them the no no boys and they were   sent to Tuli Lake in California and Tuli Lake was  a higher maximum security [Music] [Applause] camp   that questionnaire really broke up families it  broke up friendships what sanira did was really   interesting during this time he turned to baseball  again before the camps and the families were split   up he held a three- game series The yes yeses  versus the no NOS the first game the Yes yeses won   and the second one the no NOS won and so it comes  down to this third game and right before they   played they canceled it uh they decided that it  was probably the best thing for it to just remain   tied one to one then he ended up saying yes so at  this point he denounced his Japanese citizenship   from 1943 to 1952 zenimura is a man really with  no [Music] country by 1944 some of the camp teams   were allowed to travel to other camps to compete  hila had three different team come into heila to   play my Dad tried to raise money for these team  to come to hila if you look at the Grand St it   was section A B C and those people that donated  money he would give them the best seat and then   in 1944 zenir was able to take his All-Star team  up to Hart Mountain when I was 17 years old when   the heila team visited Hart Mountain Wyoming  with another relocation camp that was about   1,500 miles we rode a rickety T Trailways  bus and it probably took us 2 days to get [Music] there to be able to take a road trip  from hila River Arizona all the way to Hart   Mountain Wyoming or to amachi Colorado these  so-called enemy aliens had this amnesty in a   way you could take a bus get on a train  and travel thousands of mile away for a tournament towards the end of the war zeni  coached the high school baseball team he   arranged a match between the hila River eagles  with the two-time state champions the Tucson   Badgers Hanley SLO was their coach who was an  ex San Francisco seal Hanley SLO said we'll   come into your Camp play one game after that  game you come over to Tucson High and we'll   have the return match Kenichi said absolutely  they start the game and it's like a boxing   match and they go the full game and it ends up  being tied in nine innings 10 all Eagles bases   loaded Harvey zenimura comes up to the plate takes  three straight balls two straight strikes and on   the sixth pitch he rips it for the walk-off win  and there were thousands of people watching this   game they all ran onto the field it was  pandemonium as T fer would say I pitched   the whole 10 Innings and people asked me how many  pitches did you throw and I said I can't remember   I kind of thought that maybe I threw 155 pitches  because they were hitting my balls all over the   field they come to an agreement that they're going  to have a rematch but this time down in Tucson   word started to spread in the Tucson community  that the Japanese American players were coming the   Tucson Community uh didn't want these so-called  enemy alien kids to play in their community so   that was kind of a a hurtful thing for Kenichi  and the Eagles cuz they wanted the return match in 1945 zenimura field closes along  with the rest of the hila River camps and the   zenimura eventually returned back to Fresno  the difficulties of resettlement was hard   most lost their homes and businesses I remember  my mom getting off at the train station and   Sacramento and a lady telling her how dare you  come back to California my dad in the little small   town couldn't even buy gas at the local station  for a while most of the niss went back to their   high schools and they played baseball resettlement  also meant that they could get their tournaments   and their road trips and Community to community  game started again and then in 1952 eay or first   generation Japanese Americans could apply for  US citizenship Kenichi was very excited about   becoming a US citizen he studied really hard  he passed and he was a proud Japanese American [Music] hila Camp Sunset glorious  colored spanning desolate desert baseball kept us alive as far as I was  concerned otherwise I would have been probably   a juvenile delinquent over there because we  were only only uh you know 15 16 17 years old   we need to show the positive aspects of our  history and the negative and I think when we   talk about incarceration during World War II it's  such a Negative subject matter because America   imprisoned their own Americans only because of  their race and we can't learn from history or   we can't heal unless we acknowledge the mistakes  that we've made it's amazing what the family went   through but myself I think that we have to have  forgiveness in our heart I know when I was young   of course I didn't like what the United States did  to us in our own country and Etc but I don't have   that much time left and I think that this word  forgiveness means a lot to us as we grow old and   if we don't have any forgiveness in our hearts we  won't have a peaceful end when we leave this earth [Music] he [Music]