The radio program The World has a couple of must hear, fanscinating links about semi-pro baseball leagues, set up throughout the American west and southwest by both Japanese and Japanese-Americans being held in internment camps during WWII.

The leagues and tournaments were already in existance, but flourished as the American government interred Japanese people following the bombing at Pearl Harbor. As one of the pieces says “in the camps they weren’t allowed to earn money, practice religion or even speak Japanese. But the camp directors did allow them to do one thing — play baseball.”

The first story has an (amazing) accompanying photo essay is called Baseball Behind Barbed Wire. I knew something about these teams, mostly because I’d read a few articles about a film released last year called American Pastime, which apparently takes place in one of the internment camps, but I what I didn’t know is that there’s a research organization dedicated to studying this time period called the Nisei Baseball Reasearch Project.

The director of the project Kerry Nakagawa of Fresno, CA was interviewed in this story from 2001 which originally also aired on The World in 2001. The story was originally recorded to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the bombing at Pearl Harbor.