Japanese Internment Memorial

Being forced to live behind barbed wire is hardly comforting for anyone, yet there are still venues for freedom even in an internment camp. Some of the Japanese chose art as their outlet, others enjoyed simple pleasures like cooking or socializing.

A popular venue of freedom inside the interment camp was the baseball diamond, where the great Japanese tradition was continued during WWII. As we saw on the memorial, a vignette was devoted to showing how important this game was to sustaining the peace of mind of the Japanese during these testing times.

I can relate to the incredible sense of freedom that they must have derived from this beautiful game. While their conditions were surely more severe then what I have to endure, the baseball diamond is the one place I can go where all my troubles seem to disappear. For the Japanese, it was a refuge that allowed men, delegated to captivity, a chance to derive happiness from a game that gave them purpose. For me, and for many of the men who lived inside the internment camp, baseball was therapy for the troubles of everyday life.