SAN JOSE, Calif. — They’re a bit hard of hearing, and they move a lot slower these days. But that didn’t stop a handful of Japanese-American octogenarians from attending a special event held in their honor Sunday afternoon to commemorate a 70-year-old baseball series they played during one of the saddest chapters of America’s history.
“It’s a very special day for us because we get to honor these members of the Greatest Generation who kept the all-American pastime alive from behind barbed wire,” said Kerry Yo Nakagawa, who helped organize the event with Bill Staples, of Chandler, Ariz.
Nagakawa, from Fresno, Calif., is the founding project director of the Nisei Baseball Research Project, and Staples is a board member.
The group’s mission, Nagakawa said, is to use baseball to help bring awareness and educate the public about the Japanese-American internment camps.
Nakagawa said 70 percent of Americans are still unaware that the World War II internment camps existed. “So that is why, through the prism of baseball, we are hopeful that they will understand what happened.”
For many Bay Area residents of Japanese descent, however, it’s still a devastating memory that is hard to forget.
For 120,000 Japanese nationals and Japanese-Americans on the West Coast relocated to one of 10 internment camps following Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, life in the camps was a blow to their spirits and faith in the United States.
Sports — especially baseball — helped them forget the indignity. Many camp internees, after all, had once played in Nisei (second-generation Japanese-American) leagues, akin to the Negro Leagues of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.
Now, the now-middle-aged players competed alongside their teenage relatives on the makeshift diamonds in bleak and arid landscapes.
Only four of the 10 internment camps allowed players to compete outside of their home base: the Gila River and Poston camps in Arizona, the Amache camp in Colorado and Heart Mountain camp in Wyoming.
The 1,200-mile bus trip between Gila River and Heart Mountain took more than a day and cost about $1,000, with each camp pitching in half.
Staples said “for Japanese-Americans, putting on a uniform” for the games “was like putting on an American flag. And these trips were their declaration of independence.”
At 87, former Gila River Eagles first baseman Tets Furukawa — who played as a teenager in the legendary 13-game series in 1944 at Heart Mountain — recalled the series (won by Gila River) as though it were yesterday.
“Game No. 10,” the retired Santa Maria farmer told a rapt audience of about 70 gathered inside the Japanese American Museum of San Jose, was “one of the most remarkable.”
Two of Furukawa’s heroes at the time were the renowned Kenichi Zenimura — a coach, manager and player for the Gila River team — and Russell Hinaga, who played the same roles for the Heart Mountain team. Both were Nisei League semi-pro players in California.
“They were old enough to be our fathers — and the way they played! We couldn’t help but feel happy that we were playing with such all stars!” Furukawa said. “We took a shellacking!”
Today, the players — including Furukawa, George Iseri and Kenso Zenimura — along with other camp internees who did not play in the game — such as Ernie Inouye, 84, and Masao Iriyama, 92 — are glued to the World Series between the San Francisco Giants and the Kansas City Royals. They watch with particular pride the finesse of Travis Ishikawa of the Giants, as well as Jeremy Guthrie and Nori Aoki of the Royals.
“We’re very proud of them,” said Furukawa, adding that the Nisei League players “did the groundwork” that helped Japanese-American players get to the major leagues.
“I hope that the baseball commemoration,” Furukawa said, “will continue and that the third and fourth generations will step in and keep it going.”