Tucson High School's baseball team played a game in 1945 versus Japanese-Americans interned at a camp near Casa Grande. A return game in Tucson was canceled.

courtesy of the pima county sports hall of fame

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On April 18, 1945, a sports headline in this newspaper read:

At Rivers Today

It became the most unusual setting for an athletic event in Tucson history, then or now.

"It was like a prison camp," remembers retired Tucson educator Brad Tolson, a sophomore infielder on Tucson High School's 1945 team. "There were no bleachers. There was no grass on the field."

The Badgers were in the middle of the most amazing baseball streak in Arizona prep history. Coach Hank Slagle's team would win 52 consecutive games as part of eight successive state championships from 1939 to 1946.

Yet the game and the outcome (Tucson lost 11-10) did not matter as much as the cultural exchange.

"We were maybe a little apprehensive going up there," said Jerry Dodson, a retired Tucson physician who was the team's starting catcher. "But once we got there and met the people, whatever apprehension we felt was resolved. I don't recall there being armed guards, but I do recall the entire camp being surrounded by barbed wire."

About 7,000 Japanese-Americans, some of them from Tucson, had been forcibly relocated to the Gila River Internment Camp between Casa Grande and Chandler. The U.S. government sent more than 120,000 American citizens of Japanese ancestry to similar camps nationwide.

To ask 10 or 15 ballplayers from Tucson High School to step into that type of political and ethnic uncertainty was at the same time risky and educational.

"They were as American as we were, and it was good for us to understand that," Dodson said. "They all spoke English. It was just an unfortunate situation in the history of our country."

The Butte High School Eagles, as the camp team became known, beat the Badgers in 10 innings. It was a week after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died and Harry Truman became president of the United States.

The war with Japan had raged for about 3 1/2 years.

"River, as it was called, was in the middle of nowhere," said Carl "Scooter" Lopez, a retired Tucson educator who was a Badgers outfielder. "What struck me is how the people living there had made the best of a bad situation. There were gardens everywhere. Vegetables. Watermelon. Nobody on our team thought of them as the enemy."

World War II ended four months later; those in the Gila River Internment Camp dispersed. A planned return game in Tucson did not take place.

"I've thought about that game and those players over the years," said Lopez. "We had gone up there the previous summer (1944), with our American Legion baseball team. We spent the night in the barracks. Some of our players participated in sumo wrestling. We watched a movie in an outdoor amphitheater. It was such a good experience.

"Some years later, all that was left of the camp was a sign, telling you what had been there."

Now, 61 years later, 10 of the men who played in that game, six from Tucson High School and four from the internment camp, will be reunited. They will have a private reception Saturday in Tucson; on Sunday at 1:30 p.m., they will be part of the Pima County Sports Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the Holiday Inn, 4550 S. Palo Verde Road.

The significance of the game was such that it has helped to generate a book and a movie.

"It was much more than a baseball game," said Kerry Yo Nakagawa, a writer and film producer from Fresno, Calif., who helped to arrange the reunion. "The coaches had planned to have a return game in Tucson to further the relationships of the players. But because of the hostilities at the time, we have had to wait 61 years for closure.

"Basically," said Nakagawa, "humanity and sportsmanship won out in 1945."

Nakagawa founded the Nisei Baseball Research Project and has written "Through the Diamond: 100 Years of Japanese American Baseball." He is producing a movie, "The American Pastime," which he plans to release next spring. Both touch on how interned Japanese-Americans turned to baseball to improve their quality of life.

Before playing Tucson High School, the Gila River Internment Camp team met (and defeated) high school teams from Mesa, Florence and Tolleson. But they wanted to play the Badgers, the state's acknowledged juggernaut, a squad that included undefeated and unscored upon pitcher Lowell Bailey and national American Legion batting champion Lee Carey, both of whom would sign pro contracts.

"The 1945 game is a significant part of our baseball history," Nakagawa said. "It had some David and Goliath variables. The reunion allows us to come full circle."

Four of Tucson High School's starting players that day — Bill Hassey, Raul Reyes, Joe Tully and Bobby Acosta — have died. The Badgers' coach, Slagle, died in 2004 at 88.

"Looking back, I don't recall the events of the game but I do remember the people and the environment," Dodson said. "It was neat to be part of something that special."