The Japanese American wartime incarceration had varied consequences, from how imprisonment negatively impacted health to how baseball helped to create a vibrant sense of normalcy. Featuring panelist Gwenn Jensen, an oral historian and medical anthropologist.
The story of the WWII incarceration of Japanese Americans, through the uncommon yet popular lens of baseball. Playing baseball was a chance to assert their citizenship and affirm their loyalty as Americans, even as camp guards in towers pointed their rifles inward and the barbed wire kept them confined.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
YURIKO GAMO ROMER began her career in advertising and is now an award-winning independent documentary filmmaker. Her newly released documentary “Baseball Behind Barbed Wire,” is about the WWII Japanese American incarceration told through the lens of baseball. She is currently in post-production with the accompanying feature documentary “Diamond Diplomacy,” about U.S. Japan relations through a shared love of baseball. Her previous film, “Mrs. Judo,” about Keiko Fukuda (1913-2013) the first woman to attain tenth-degree black belt in judo, traveled to more than 25 film festivals internationally and was awarded the Best Documentary Grand Jury Award at the 2013 International Festival of Sport Films, Moscow and broadcast nationally on PBS. Romer was born in Japan and raised in the United States. She holds M.A. in documentary filmmaking from Stanford University, where she was a teaching fellow, National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Scholar and awarded a Student Academy Award, Gold Medal.
- Year2023
- Runtime34 minutes
- DirectorYuriko Gamo Romer
The Japanese American wartime incarceration had varied consequences, from how imprisonment negatively impacted health to how baseball helped to create a vibrant sense of normalcy. Featuring panelist Gwenn Jensen, an oral historian and medical anthropologist.
The story of the WWII incarceration of Japanese Americans, through the uncommon yet popular lens of baseball. Playing baseball was a chance to assert their citizenship and affirm their loyalty as Americans, even as camp guards in towers pointed their rifles inward and the barbed wire kept them confined.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
YURIKO GAMO ROMER began her career in advertising and is now an award-winning independent documentary filmmaker. Her newly released documentary “Baseball Behind Barbed Wire,” is about the WWII Japanese American incarceration told through the lens of baseball. She is currently in post-production with the accompanying feature documentary “Diamond Diplomacy,” about U.S. Japan relations through a shared love of baseball. Her previous film, “Mrs. Judo,” about Keiko Fukuda (1913-2013) the first woman to attain tenth-degree black belt in judo, traveled to more than 25 film festivals internationally and was awarded the Best Documentary Grand Jury Award at the 2013 International Festival of Sport Films, Moscow and broadcast nationally on PBS. Romer was born in Japan and raised in the United States. She holds M.A. in documentary filmmaking from Stanford University, where she was a teaching fellow, National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Scholar and awarded a Student Academy Award, Gold Medal.
- Year2023
- Runtime34 minutes
- DirectorYuriko Gamo Romer