American Pastime

The Jilting of Japanese Baseball

In the shadow of the sports dramas Glory Road, Invicible and now Pride, Audience Award winning filmmaker Desmond Nakano strikes out with Warner Bros.Thursday, March 29, 2007 at 8:45 PMBy Pam Grady

Lyle Nomura (Aaron Yoo) has two loves: jazz and baseball. And with a sports scholarship to San Francisco State, at least one of those passions looks as if it might blossom into something much bigger.
But Lyle is also Japanese-American and after the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor to usher in the United States' entry into World War II, he and his family discover just how little citizenship can actually mean when xenophobia sweeps the nation. Sent by government decree to the Topaz internment camp in tiny Abraham, Utah, Lyle's dreams turn to dust, but he, his kin, and his community do not simply surrender to injustice in Desmond Nakano's American Pastime.


Savoy Pictures Photo
A not entirely happy return to features
The recent silver anniversary edition of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival was very, very good to Nakano, who is probably best known for his screenplay adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.'s cult novel Last Exit to Brooklyn. Not only did the festival host the world premiere of his first film since the John Travolta-starring White Man's Burden a dozen years ago, but he also came away with the Comcast Audience Award for Narrative Feature. During the festival, he and associate producer Kerry Yo Nakagawa expressed the hope that Warner Bros. would allow their movie a short theatrical run in advance of its May 22nd DVD release. Given the short window involved that seems unlikely, but maybe the prize will help their cause.
It is a little curious that Warners is not giving the film a proper release. It is true that Yoo is relatively unknown, but with roles in the upcoming Disturbia and Rocket Science that status is purely temporary. And while there may be no big stars among the supporting cast, there are certainly recognizable faces and names.
Leonardo Nam (The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) is on hand in the role of Lyle's less hotheaded, older brother Lane; Everwood's Sarah Drew plays Lyle's love interest Katie Burrell; and Napoleon Dynamite's Uncle Rico, Jon Gries, plays the racist town barber Ed Tully. Starring opposite Yoo as camp guard Billy Burrell, a semi-pro ballplayer still dreaming of a shot at the big leagues well into middle age, is the always-awesome Gary Cole.


Steve Granitz/WireImage.com Photo
Co-star Gary Cole
Mainly, it seems odd that Warners is not releasing this, because sports movies are such a no-brainer when it comes to Hollywood. Granted, this one is more personal than most and does not quite follow the usual inspirational script, although it does climax with a ballgame (with a title like American Pastime, did you think that it wouldn't?) and a bit of an uplift. But with the more recent sports dramas built around basketball (Glory Road), football (Invincible), swimming (Pride) and even air guitar (another SFIAFF favorite, the wonderful documentary Air Guitar Nation), it has been a while since there has been a decent baseball movie in theaters. Nakano's little low-budget indie seems like a missed golden opportunity.
Perhaps the studio was a little afraid of it, because along with its sports drama is a history lesson that a lot of Americans would sooner leave buried. Unlike slavery, which defined the country's first century and still reverberates to this day, the internment of American citizens during the 1940s only lasted as long as the war did, making it far easier to sweep under the rug.
But Nakano's own parents were interred during the war. His father, the late actor and singer Lane Nakano, would go on to volunteer to serve in the 442nd Infantry Regimental Combat Team, a volunteer unit comprised solely of Japanese-American soldiers that became the most decorated squad in American military history for its actions in the European theater. Later, the elder Nakano would star opposite Van Johnson in the 1951 drama Go for Broke! that limned the Nisei soldiers' heroism.


Jemal Countess/WireImage.com Photo
Co-star Sarah Drew
Nakano admits the story, written with Tony Kayden, is loosely based on his own family, but while Lane Nomura joins the 442 (and is returned to internment when his service is complete, despite the fact that he is now a decorated lieutenant, a superior officer to the soldiers guarding him), the twin hearts of the story are jazz and baseball. It is the saxophone that makes life at Topaz bearable for Lyle (and is the instrument by which he woos music teacher Katie). For Nomura patriarch, Kaz (Masatoshi Nakamura), whose own prowess on the diamond was such that he played on all-star teams with the likes of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig as a young man, forming ball teams is one way to keep morale going in the camp.
The prejudice the internees face is unceasing, driven by paranoia and a well of ignorance so deep that the guards and townspeople seem incapable of acknowledging that these strangers in their midst are their fellow Americans, whether immigrant or native born. And for some who have lost loved ones in the Pacific, the newcomers are convenient scapegoats for their rage and grief. Even after the 442 is formed and the gold stars that signal a fallen soldier begin to accumulate at Topaz, the shared sacrifice goes unacknowledged.
All of which serves to set up the main conflict between Lyle and Billy Burrell, a division made more grotesque in that they are both in thrall to the same passion for baseball. That Lyle is in love with Billy's daughter only deepens the guard's resentment of the young man with the wicked fastball. It would be easy to paint Billy as the standard, stick figure redneck but neither Nakano and Kayden in their script or the underrated Cole in his performance settle for such a shallow portrayal.
During the Q&A following American Pastime's screening at SFIAFF, Nakano observed that he approached issues of race in this differently than he had 12 years ago when he was making White Man's Burden, a drama which upended African-American and white stereotypes. "I was conscious of race as an issue then. This time was the opposite," he said. "This is really about two families."
Australian actor Nam, to whom this history was a revelation, concurred, saying, "I think it's really an emotional journey we can take together.”
Associate producer Nakagawa previously wrote about the internment in his book, Through a Diamond: 100 Years of Japanese American Baseball. During the making of American Pastime, he turned his attention to the 442's veterans (like Nakano, he has a family connection in an uncle who served), conducting interviews on camera and as oral histories.
Some of that footage will be on the DVD, one advantage the home video format has over theatrical release. Still, if American Pastime does turn up at a theater near you, it is well worth checking out, for the history, the moving family story, and the homage it pays to the boys of summer.

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