Barbed Wire Baseball
How One Man Brought Hope to the Japanese Internment Camps of WWII
written by Marissa Moss
illustrated by Yuko Shimizu
ISBN 9781419720581
37 pages
copyright 2013
California Book Award Gold Medal
ALA/ALSC Notable Children's Book
IRA Teacher's Choice Reading List
Asian/Pacific American Award
Society of Illustrators Silver Medal
Notable Social Studies Trade Book
Eureka! Nonfiction Honor Book
recommended ages 6-12
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Zeni (Kenichi Zenimura) loved baseball.
Even since he watched his first game as an 8 year old, he knew he wanted to be a baseball player. When he grew up, he coached, managed, and played baseball in California. He was a star, even though he was only 5 feet tall and weighed only 100 pounds. Then Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941, and Zeni and his wife and two teenage sons were sent to Gila River War Relocation Center in Arizona. The only thing that would make this place feel like home was baseball, so Zeni set out to build a baseball diamond in the desert. He and his sons and other volunteers cleared rocks and brush, and leveled the land with the camp's bulldozer. They planted grass and irrigated it from the laundry room. His sons marked the diamond with flour “chalk” lines, and his wife sewed the bases from rice sacks. Finally, they sneaked out at night, stole wood from the camp fence, and created a backstop and bleachers for the spectators. Then, with money collected from the prisoners, Zeni ordered the ball equipment, while several women sewed the uniforms out of potato sacks. At the first game, he hit the ball up and over the barbed wire fence, and he felt ten feet tall!
It is hard for me to imagine the feelings of the Japanese Americans during WWII
While suspicion and prejudice ran rampant, they did the best they could to “recreate” home and lead “normal” lives. This is a beautiful book about a neglected corner of history. The illustrations are exquisite, and the sensitive topic is carefully handled. It will have you wondering what would be most important to you if everything you knew was stripped away. What makes home, “home?”
Content Considerations
none, apart from the racism and segregation that put Japanese American citizens into internment camps in the first place.