In photos: Sports and Japanese American incarceration camps
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Tosh Asano runs out of bounds during a football game at Heart Mountain prison camp in Wyoming, November 1943. Photo: Hikaru Iwasaki for War Relocation Authority via National Archives
Today marks the 80th anniversary of the Day of Remembrance, when President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which led to the forced removal and mass incarceration of about 120,000 Japanese Americans into 10 incarceration camps.
Why it matters: To pass the time and ease the trauma of incarceration, people of all ages and genders played sports and organized fitness classes, participating in everything from football and baseball to weight lifting and ice skating.
Of note: Two temporary detention centers, Santa Anita (near Los Angeles) and Tanforan (near San Francisco), were former racetracks.
- Families lived in converted horse stalls, as described by Gary Okihiro in "Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment."
- At Santa Anita, they would joke darkly about living in barrack 28, units 24 and 25, where Seabiscuit used to live.
