“If you build it, they will come.”
— “Field of Dreams” (1999)

For two weeks in 1942, Kenichi Zenimura was in a state of depression.
He and his family had just been taken to the American concentration camp at Gila River and all the man known as the “Father of Japanese American baseball” could do was look out into the bleak Arizona desert, and shake his head in despair.

But after two weeks, Zenimura broke out of his funk when he looked out into the desert and saw something new and different: “I’m going to build a baseball field outside the barbed wired fences,” he told his wife.

And sure enough, Zenimura built his “Field of Dreams.” And when he built it, the people did come — from inside the camp to play the great American pastime on Native American land, and from “the outside,” as local Arizona teams and other camp teams visited to play the Nisei teams from inside the camp.

At Gila River alone, Zenimura organized 32 teams into three divisions, and what was once a barren desert filled with trauma and humiliation became a place of hope, joy and normalcy — all because of baseball, and the place it was played on: “Zenimura Field.”

This story and more is brought to life in “Baseball Behind Barbed Wire” (2023, 34 min.), a documentary short written and directed by filmmaker Yuriko Gamo Romer.
Perhaps best known for her award-winning film, “Mrs. Judo,” about the life of 10th degree judo black belt Keiko Fukuda, Gamo Romer moves from judo to baseball to bring this story “out into the world and have more people know about it.”

Featuring interviews with Kerry Yo Nakagawa, director of the Nisei Baseball Research Project, two former ballplayers and author/researcher Bill Staples Jr., the film covers when baseball was first introduced to Japan in 1872 all the way through the World War II years when it was played in all 10 camps as a way for Nisei to assert their citizenship and affirm their loyalty as Americans.

Gamo Romer, who is currently working on a feature documentary entitled “Diamond Diplomacy” about U.S.-Japan relations as played out through baseball, said that in 2020 when she first started working on her Nisei baseball film issues of the Japanese American incarceration kept coming up in the context of anti-Asian hate.

“As an Asian American, it’s hard to believe that this happened to American citizens,” said Gamo Romer. “I believe these kinds of issues develop out of fear, which is not an excuse but a very human thing. Which means this could happen again. So it felt like something that needs to be continually talked about and never to be forgotten.”

By using baseball as her vehicle, Gamo Romer hopes audiences walk away with an understanding of the injustice, particularly for American citizens. “I hope the film will make people think about why this happened, and continue to keep it in the dialogue of our democracy.

“I would also like people to think about an underlying aspect of how sports can create common ground.”

Common ground that has led to the emergence of superstar Shohei Ohtani.
“Zenimura and the Nikkei lineage is definitely a part of his path,” Gamo Romer added. “The love of baseball being shared throughout this history — on both sides of the Pacific — kept all of this moving in a way that we now have a Japanese face of Major League Baseball.”

Kerry Nakagawa couldn’t agree more. “Every time Ohtani and other Japanese players take the field it really validates our Issei and Nisei pioneers that could have raised the MLB even higher had they not been banned. I know they are looking down on today’s legacy players with pride!”

WHAT: “Baseball Behind Barbed Wire” (2023, 34 min.) by Yuriko Gamo Romer
TIME: 4 p.m. in the Life and Death Behind Barbed Wire program
WHEN & WHERE:

• Saturday, Feb. 24, 2024 at AMC Kabuki 8 theater in San Francisco’s Japantown
• Sunday, Feb. 25, 2024 San Jose Buddhist Church Betsuin in San Jose’s Japantown
  VIRTUAL OPTION: There will also be a virtual option to watch the film From Feb. 24 through March 10 (does not include panel).
  INFO/TICKETS: 2024.filmsofremembrance.org