From DiscoverNikkei.org
Kenichi Zenimura
Baseball player and coach (1900-1968)
Often called the "father of Japanese-American baseball," Kenichi Zenimura (1900-1968) was a pioneering player, coach, manager, and organizer whose contributions and influence spanned the Pacific. Born in Hiroshima, Zenimura acquired a passion for the game in his youth and, after moving to Fresno, California in 1920, he founded the Fresno Athletic Club, a Japanese-American baseball team that lasted more than fifty years and attained national recognition. Despite being only five feet tall and weighing 100 pounds, Zenimura was an intense competitor as a shortstop and catcher, and he organized goodwill tours of Japanese-American teams to Japan in the 1920s and '30s. During World War II, the Zenimura family was sent to internment camps in Fresno and Gila River, Arizona, where under Kenichi's guidance, baseball fields were constructed and teams and leagues were formed behind barbed wire. Huge crowds flocked to the games and baseball was credited with bonding wartime internees, giving them a sense of normalcy and community pride. The late actor Pat Morita, a former Gila River internee, said Zenimura left an indelible mark on that fraternal community in the desert by showing "that with effort and persistence, you can overcome the harshness of adversity." Zenimura returned to Fresno after the war, where he continued playing (he caught his last game at age fifty-five) and coaching until his death in 1968.
-- source: The Baseball Reliquary, Inc. (2006)
- Profile of Kenichi Zenimura (Nisei Baseball Research Project)
- Nick Gate, "Baseball teaches story of Japanese-American internment". North Gate News Online, October 19, 2005.
- Ethen Lieser, "Kenichi Zenimura: Father of JA Baseball". AsianWeek, January 11-17, 2002.
- Profile of Zenimura based on the documentary film Diamonds in the Rough.
- Ty Young, "From internment to hope". The Arizona Republic, November 10, 2005.
- Excerpt: "Two years ago, Bill Staples was researching three seemingly unrelated interests - baseball, Buddhism and the Gila River Indian Community - when he stumbled upon a common thread. It began with a single name, Kenichiro Zenimura, a practicing Buddhist and Japanese-American baseball player interned at the Gila River Relocation Center during World War II."
- Zenimura Field (Nisei Baseball Research Project)