Barbed Wire Baseball

Barbed Wire Baseball
Author: Marissa Moss
Illustrator: Yuko Shimizu
Genre: Nonfiction
Grades: 3- 6

This story is about boy of Japanese descent living in Hawaii. At the age of 8 Zeni saw his first baseball game with his father and fell in love with the game. After years of practice he became a star player of the game. He was chosen to play with members of the New York Yankees, but his life completely changed when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. When the US went to war with japan the government thought that the Japanese Americans were spies and were sent to internment camps. Zeni, his wife, and two kids were sent to an internment camp in Arizona. The only thing that made the desert camp feel like home was baseball, so in the empty space of the camp he decided to build a baseball field. Many saw that he was building a baseball field and decided to help. While Zeni and the men of the camp built the field, the wives sewed uniforms out of potato sacks. When the field was finally ready, the first game gave people a sense of hope.