Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth with four members of the Fresno Athletics Club baseball team in 1927. From left: Johnny Nakagawa (Kerry Nakagawa’s uncle), Gehrig, Kenichi Zenimura, Ruth, Fred Yoshikawa and Harvey Iwata.
“From JA to Shohei: Baseball and the Japanese American Experience,” a film screening and panel discussion, will be held on Saturday, May 16, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 18th Street Arts Center, 1639 18th St., Santa Monica.
Yuriko Gamo Romer’s documentary short “Baseball Behind Barbed Wire” is about the role that baseball played for Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II. The sport lifted the spirits of people who were stripped of their constitutional rights, homes, businesses, and dignity, and forced into dusty, desolate camps surrounded by armed guards and barbed wire.
Panelists:
Author, historian, professor Susan H. Kamei
Author, filmmaker, and Nisei Baseball Research Project founder Kerry Yo Nakagawa
Southern California NAU Baseball League President Bobby Umemoto
Manzanar Baseball Project Director Dan Kwong
This program is presented by 18th Street Arts Center with a generous CAC Impact Grant, as part of the Manzanar Baseball Project directed by Kwong and produced by Great Leap.
Free and open to the public. Info/tickets: https://18thstreet.org/event/from-ja-to-shohei/