Introduction to Diamond Diplomacy: A Film About Japanese-American Baseball History
The new film “Diamond Diplomacy” explores the complex relationship between the United States and Japan through the lens of baseball, highlighting the journeys of four Japanese players, including Shohei Ohtani, to the major leagues. The film puts the dramatic final moments of the 2023 World Baseball Classic on pause to share this story. Baseball has been a national pastime in both nations for over a century, with a Japanese publishing magnate sponsoring a 1934 barnstorming tour led by Babe Ruth.
The Dodgers, under former owners Walter and Peter O’Malley, were at the forefront of tours to Japan and elsewhere. In 1946, the United States government funded a tour by the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League, which is featured prominently in the film. Director Yuriko Gamo Romer said, “I thought it was remarkable that the U.S. government decided to send a baseball team to Japan to help repair relations and for goodwill.”
The History of Japanese Baseball Players in the Major Leagues
Romer shows how Babe Ruth barnstormed Central California in 1927, a decade and a half before the U.S. government forced citizens of Japanese ancestry into internment camps there. Teams and leagues sprouted within the camps, an arrangement described by one player as “baseball behind barbed wire.” The film also relates how, even after World War II ended, Japanese Americans were often unwelcome in their old neighborhoods, and Japanese baseball leagues sprung up like the Negro Leagues.
In 1964, the San Francisco Giants made pitcher Masanori Murakami the first Japanese player in Major League Baseball, but he yielded to pressure to return to his homeland two years later. San Francisco Giants pitcher Masanori Murakami, shown on the a pro baseball field in 1964, was the first Japanese athlete to play in Major League Baseball.
(Associated Press)
Modern-Day Japanese Baseball Players
In 1995, when pitcher Hideo Nomo signed with the Dodgers, he had to retire from Japanese baseball to do so. The film contains footage of legendary Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda teaching Nomo to say, “I bleed Dodger blue.” Now, star Japanese players regularly join the majors. In that 2023 WBC, as the film shows at its end, Ohtani left his first big imprint on the international game by striking out Trout to deliver victory to Japan over the United States.
On Friday, Ohtani powered the Dodgers into the World Series with perhaps the greatest game by any player in major league history. 
