First, the tumbleweeds were cleared. Then, an archaeological dig found the posts for the backstop and the bases. Finally, old black-and-white photographs unearthed in an archive in Los Angeles were examined to make sure everything was reconstructed exactly as it had been.
All that was left was to play baseball.
For nearly two decades, Dan Kwong had the dream of restoring the baseball field at Manzanar, the sprawling camp in the Mojave Desert where thousands of Japanese and Americans with Japanese ancestry were incarcerated during World War II, among them Kwong’s mother. Before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, baseball was a source of connection between Japan and the United States.
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