A post on MetaFilter today — “Baseball in the Japanese internment camps” — reminded me that I hadn’t posted about my visit last year to the euphemistically named Manzanar War Relocation Center, now known as the Manzanar National Historic Site.
While the many impressions I took away from that visit could fill several blog posts, I’ll focus this one on a few photographs. (Click on them to enlarge.)
The Japanese-American prisoners made the best of their internment at this and other camps, often playing baseball (among other activities) to pass the time when they weren’t working.
The caption next to this display read, “Home Plate, c. 1943. Pieces of home plate from a baseball field located in the North Firebreak between Blocks 19 and 25.”
You can take a driving tour of the entire camp — there aren’t many buildings left, though some are being restored — and see signs like this one, giving you a sense of what used to be there. If you’re like me, though, you get out and start exploring. Luckily, this was encouraged by the docents.
There is a small baseball diamond here, with a home plate and pitcher’s rubber embedded in the sand. As a lover of the desert environment, I was conflicted by the beauty of my surroundings juxtaposed with the ghosts of prisoners and buildings.
Looking back at home plate. Baseball can distract you from a lot of ills, even the worst of them. It can’t solve them, it can’t bust you out of a camp in the middle of a deadly desert, but it can help a little to ease the isolation.
I just wish baseball hadn’t had to do it here, in this place, for these Americans.
Great post, TD. Lots of food for thought here.