Please join us on July 20, 2025 at 11:45 am when our guest speaker, Paul Hironaka, will give a presentation on the “Manzanar Baseball Project,” which is bringing baseball back to the fully restored baseball field at Manzanar Incarceration Camp. Baseball played a very important part of “camp life” at all ten incarceration camps for many of the people incarcerated during World War II. Japanese Americans were playing baseball in their own leagues for many years prior to being incarcerated in 1942. This coming October, there will be two baseball games played on this very special field by teams comprised of Japanese American baseball players.
In addition to Paul’s informational presentation, the film “Day of Independence” by Tim Toyama will be shown as well as a short newsclip of NBC News’s Emelie Ikeda’s national report on the Manzanar Baseball Project. This event is free of charge.

Paul Hironaka has been a baseball umpire at the high school level in Sacramento for 28 years with six years of community college baseball and the Florin Athletic Club for twenty years. Paul umpired at the “soft opening” baseball games at Manzanar last October.

Photo by Ansel Adams