Up Next
Back to Show
Lost LA
Baseball, A Silver Lining in the Japanese American Internment Camps
During World War II, the internment camps became involuntary homes for thousands of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. It couldn't have been easy, but incarcerees still found way to find some measure of happiness in their surroundings. One of these ways was through playing baseball. Host Nathan Masters speaks with National Park Ranger Rose Masters and photographer Paul Kitakagi, Jr. about how Japanese Americans continued to persevere in their strange surroundings, and how baseball — an iconic American pastime — became a saving grace for many stranded inside those camps.
Support Provided By
26:39
How Filipino Americans in Southern California are making their heritage more visible.
26:47
Iconic fast-food chains from McDonald’s to Taco Bell were born in SoCal.
26:37
After internment camps, Japanese Americans made L.A.'s Crenshaw neighborhood their home.
26:46
Dig deep into Southern California’s past to reveal lessons for our climate-changed future.
26:41
Explore a forgotten age when winemaking was Southern California’s principal industry.
26:46
Why did Los Angeles dismantle one of the greatest rail transit systems in the nation?
26:40
Explore the lasting impact of the Shindana Toy Company, created out of the need for community empowerment following the 1965 Watts uprising, whose ethnically correct black dolls forever changed the American doll industry.
24:52
As recently as a century ago, scientists doubted whether the universe extended beyond our own Milky Way — until astronomer Edwin Hubble, working with the world’s most powerful telescope discovered just how vast the universe is.
26:17
Although best known for designing the homes of celebrities like Lucille Ball and Frank Sinatra, the pioneering African-American architect Paul Revere Williams also contributed to some of the city’ s most recognizable civic structures.
26:40
Prohibition may have outlawed liquor, but that didn’t mean the booze stopped flowing. Explore the myths of subterranean Los Angeles, crawl through prohibition-era tunnels, and visit some of the city’s oldest speakeasies.
26:40
During World War II, three renowned photographers captured scenes from the Japanese incarceration: outsiders Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams and incarceree Tōyō Miyatake who boldly smuggled in a camera lens to document life from within the camp.
26:48
Griffith Park is one of the largest municipal parks in the United States. Its founder, Griffith J. Griffith, donated the land to the city as a public recreation ground for all the people — an ideal that has been challenged over the years.