Hope is the belief that your life is going to improve and that your life will become better. Hope is a theological virtue in the Catholic Faith, along with Faith and Charity. This means that hope ultimately comes from God. Hope enables us to endure suffering and gives us the strength to go on when life becomes trying.
Since we encounter the world in each minute of our lives, it is only natural that God will use people, events and activities to help us find hope. Marissa Moss has written a powerful story about how the sport of baseball gave hope to Japanese Americans imprisoned in incarceration camps during World War II. The name of this impressive story is "Barbed Wire Baseball."
Kenichi Zenimura watches his first baseball game at the age of 8. He is immediately fascinated with the sport and is determined to become a great baseball player. As he charges onto the field and into various leagues, people at first laugh at him. Zeni, as he is called, is barely 5 feet tall. No one believes that someone so small can be a good baseball player. This makes him all the more determined. He practices hitting, fielding and throwing.
In several years he becomes one of the finest Japanese-American players in California. He is so talented that the New York Yankees take Zeni and several other Japanese-American players on a baseball tour of Japan. Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig both dwarf Zeni on the field. But his aggressive and talented play makes a big impression on the Japanese nation during the tour. Back home in the USA, Zeni continues to star and coach in the minor leagues in California.
This pleasant world painfully changes after the Pearl Harbor Attack in 1941. Japanese-Americans on the West Coast come under immediate scrutiny and racial prejudice. The Roosevelt Administration sends 120,000 Japanese-Americans to 10 internment camps in the western states. There they are stuck in desolate areas where many begin to lose hope.
Zeni decided that he needs to do something to lift the spirits of these stricken people. He remembers all the pleasure baseball has brought to him and determines to use the sport to uplift the people. He begins forming work details and turning the desert into a verdant baseball diamond. It is hard work and there are few supplies. Zeni and his fellow workers are undaunted and begin building a complete ballpark in the desert. Fellow Japanese-Americans begin to help and soon building the ball field becomes a unifying beacon of hope for the people. The men plant the grass; the women sew the uniforms and bases from sacks. The great day is coming and 6,000 people come to the new stadium for the first game.
As the anticipation builds, Zeni steps to the plate. As the ball speeds toward him, Zeni connects with a mighty crack of the bat. As the ball soars upward, the people begin to cheer and Zeni feels lifted above the internment camp. Hope has arrived.
Does Zeni’s ball go out of the park? Does the sport of baseball lift the spirits of an entire people? How can one person make such an impact during such a dreadful period? Why is Kenichi Zenimura a true American hero? To find out, go to the library and check out this inspiring book, "Barbed Wire Baseball," by Marissa Moss.
Kenichi Zenimura made such an impact on the nation of Japan that he was elected into the Japanese Shrine of the Eternals in 2006. This is the Japanese equivalent of the Baseball Hall of Fame. This powerful account has excellent pictures and tells a magnificent story. I hope you get a chance to read this fine book as it is an important story that can teach the country much today. I think you will find it inspiring.
