Baseball behind barbed wire - Access to Japan

Whole Earth Review, Winter, 1990 by Jay Feldman

A grandstand was the next project. "We needed lumber," says Harvey Zenimura, now 61. "We were in Block 28 and the lumber yard was way across the other side of the camp. We'd go out there in the middle of the night and get the lumber, lug it all the way out in the sagebrush, bury it in the desert, and go pick it up later as we needed it. They probably knew what was going on, but nobody said anything."

The graded bleachers had four or five rows, and Zenimura went so far as to delineate individual seats on the planks. "My dad marked the benches with paint," laughs Harvey, who was all-Japan with the Carp in 1955-56. He drew lines and put numbers. Anybody that donated a lot of money would get a good seat."

Beyond first and third base, dugouts were excavated so the fans could enjoy good sight lines. More of the cement-curing pads covered the dugouts and bleachers, to provide some shade against the desert sun. The pebbles strained from the infield were spread below the bleachers and on the dugout floors to keep down the dust. For an outfield fence, they planted castor beans at ten-foot intervals and dug a ditch behind them to deliver water. Finally, clumps of Bermuda grass were planted in the outfield, and some plumber friends ran a line all the way from the end of Block 28 to the ballpark for a portable sprinkler system.

Thirty-two teams competed in Gila, where the climate allowed for year-round play. At every game, a collection was taken UP, and Zenimura used the proceeds to have baseball equipment shipped from a Fresno sporting-goods dealer. In a 1962 interview, he claimed to have ordered about $2,000 worth of equipment from Fresno every month ! GIVEN THE popularity of baseball in the pre-war Japanese-American community, its prominence in the camps is hardly surprising; while there was organized competition in many sports, including basketball, football, boxing, and softball, none were pursued with the passion and ardor devoted to baseball.

The same creativity that was tapped for the construction of ballfields was used to provide uniforms. "We ordered jerseys from Sears Roebuck, and one of the fellows stenciled in the name," relates the gravel-voiced Nishimoto, who managed the Placer Hillmen to a Tule Lake camp championship in 1943. "But the pants were potato sacks that came from the farm. They were heavy cotton, bleached white. Two or three of the ladies sewed them up for us, and they looked real professional, too." Another Tule Lake team, the Wakabas, removed the canvas covers from the government-issue mattresses, and had custom shirts and pants made. The Issei continued to be a major force behind the scenes - financially and otherwise. "I went to learn sumo wrestling," says Florin's Yosh Tsukamoto, 70. "I got holy hell from the backers. They didn't want me to get hurt. So then I went to learn how to box. One of the guys wanted to put on an exhibition, and about half a dozen Florin guys were in it. When I came to the ring, I saw my dad standing over there. Boy, we all caught hell from the parents. That ended that. Stick to baseball."