Baseball helped many Japanese Americans survive the incarceration camps of World War II.
America’s past time was also their past time. So when fourth generation Japanese American Travis Ishikawa hit his home run Thursday in the bottom of the ninth to propel the San Francisco Giants to the World Series, survivors of the camp watched with special pride.
NBC Bay Area talked with two baseball players who played in the camps.
“It was a traumatic time for all Japanese Americans I can remember playing baseball in camp quite a bit and traveling from one corner of the camp to another to play other teams in the camp,” said Joe Yasutake, an incarceration camp survivor.
But the joy of playing baseball didn’t hide the fact that they were prisoners.
“If you hit a foul ball that went past the fence, you couldn’t go after it. The guards had to go after it, said Roy Matsuzaki, another ballplayer from the camps.
You can learn about a special exhibition about baseball in incarceration camps in the clip below from NBC Bay Area
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