The Sporkball Journals

Update: ‘American Pastime’ Gets to the Big Leagues

September 26th, 2008

Read the original post: American Pastime

• UPDATE •

September 26, 2008 — Exciting news for yours truly chimed into my email inbox this morning. ‘American Pastime‘ is scheduled to be broadcast this evening on ESPN Classic Films. Many thanks to Kerry Yo Nakagawa for sending the following press release information. Bye for now!

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Kerry Yo Nakagawa
September 19, 2008 559-824-3210
nbrp@comcast.net

ESPN CLASSIC TO AIR BASEBALL FILM “AMERICAN PASTIME”
Award-winning movie details baseball in WWII Japanese American Internment Camps

FRESNO, Calif., (September 19, 2008) – In partnership with ESPN, Inc., The Worldwide Leader in Sports, the Nisei Baseball Research Project (NBRP) is pleased to announce that ESPN Classic Films will debut the award-winning film “American Pastime” on Friday, September 26 at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific.

Released by Warner Brothers Films in 2007, “American Pastime” is a powerful story about the dramatic impact WWII had in the home-front as Japanese American families were uprooted from their every day lives and placed into internment camps in Western US in the early to mid-1940s.

Faced with a country that now doubted their loyalty and struggling with their new situation, they turn to baseball as a way to handle their plight and find the strength to stand up for themselves becoming a true symbol of honor and pride.

The movie was written and directed by Desmond Nakano (White Man’s Burden) and the cast includes such notables as Gary Cole (Talledega Nights, Dodgeball), Aaron Yoo (Disturbia, The Wackness), Masatoshi Nakamura and Judie Ongg (renowned actors/singers in Japan) and Jon Gries (Naploeon Dynamite). Also making a cameo role is former major leaguer and host of ESPN’s Baseball Tonight, John Kruk.

NBRP founder, Kerry Yo Nakagawa, served as associate producer of the film and also played a ballplayer on the internment camp baseball team with his son Kale.

Despite the serious subject matter of war-time incarceration, fans and critics describe “American Pastime” as “funny, sad, and even romantic” and ultimately as “life-affirming, spiritually-uplifting and entertaining.” Fans of inspirational sports movies, historical fiction, and even comedies will enjoy watching “American Pastime.”

Entertaining and Educational
The film is also used by history and social studies teachers in classrooms across the nation. A teacher’s guide for ‘American Pastime’ is now being implemented with many school districts around the country becoming educated on Japanese American internment through the prism of baseball. While everyone is encouraged to learn about this important chapter in U.S. history, the film will be of special interest to those in the states where the ten internment camps were housed. In 1942 the U.S. Government sent approximately 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, the majority of them U.S. citizens, to camps in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. This year, 2008, marks the 66th anniversary that Japanese Americans first played baseball behind barbed wire.

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The Fact Behind the Fiction
The main character of the film, Kaz Nomura, is loosely based on the real-life Kenichi Zenimura, the Japanese American baseball pioneer who competed on the same diamonds with Hall of Famers Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, and Biz Mackey and Andy Cooper of the Negro Leagues during the 1920s and 30s.

As an international baseball ambassador during this same period, Zenimura was also instrumental in exporting the American pastime to Japan as well. The fruits of his baseball-ambassador efforts are now reflected in the major league presence of Japanese players like Ichiro Suzuki of the Mariners, Daisuke Matsuzaka of the Red Sox, and Kosuke Fukudome of the Cubs, just to name a few.

For more information about ESPN Classic Films, visit www.espn.com. For more information about Japanese American baseball history, visit: www.niseibaseball.com or email: nbrp@comcast.net.

About the Nisei Baseball Research Project
The Nisei Baseball Research Project (NBRP) is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization founded in 1996 by Kerry Yo Nakagawa to preserve the history of Japanese American Baseball. In Cooperstown they have a saying that Baseball is a game of Dreams and Memories. It is for both those reasons that the NBRP was developed. The ultimate goal of the NBRP is the permanent inclusion of Japanese Americans in Baseball into the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown and continue to educate about internment baseball during WWII.

About “American Pastime”
The American Pastime screenplay is by Desmond Nakano & Tony Kayden. Barry Rosenbush, who executive produced the 6-time Emmy-nominated hit “High School Musical,” produced along with Tom Gorai and Terry Spazek. David Skinner and Arata Matsushima are executive producers and Kerry Yo Nakagawa, associate producer. American Pastime is a Warner Home Video presentation of a T & C Pictures, ShadowCatcher Entertainment, Rosy Bushes production of a Desmond Nakano film.

Entry Filed under: Game of Life, Major League Baseball, Minor Leagues