Dan Kwong, a 71-year-old performance artist from Los Angeles, has spent the past three years transforming the abandoned baseball diamond at Manzanar into a living museum of resistance. On 26 October 2024, in Lone Pine, California, the restored field hosted a double-header that drew more than a hundred spectators, including descendants of the 120,000 Japanese Americans who were forcibly relocated to the site during World War II. The event, staged by Kwong’s Japanese American baseball programme, saw players from the California Japanese Amateur League batting in vintage 1940s uniforms while former inmates and their families watched from the bleachers. For Kwong, the re-creation was not merely a sporting spectacle but a deliberate act of historical reclamation, turning a scarred landscape into a space where the contradictions of American history could be confronted directly.
The Manzanar Baseball Project Takes Shape
The restoration effort began in earnest after Kwong first conceived the idea decades ago, inspired by his own family’s connection to the camp. His mother had been a prisoner at Manzanar, and her stories of playing baseball in the camps deepened his commitment to preserving that legacy. Over the past two years, the artist has coordinated with volunteers, a Hollywood prop shop, and the Japanese American National Museum to rebuild the dirt field, erect bleachers, and construct a makeshift announcer’s booth that would read legal disclaimers and safety warnings to players. The project faced numerous obstacles, including restrictions from the National Park Service, a federal shutdown that halted initial planning, and a devastating windstorm that had knocked down the original fence just weeks before the planned opening. Despite these setbacks, Kwong persisted, securing funding through private donations and the generosity of professional baseball teams who contributed both money and equipment.
A Field of Memory and Resistance
The field, which had been overgrown and largely forgotten for decades, was transformed into a meticulously recre
