When Football Was Played in an Internment Camp
The Lead
Wondery
3.9 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 6 November 2020
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government did something that it later apologized for and called a grave error: it rounded up and forcibly relocated tens of thousands of Japanese Americans, moving them to internment camps, where they lived in extremely harsh conditions for years. Inside one of those camps, near Topaz, Utah, a high school football team was formed and surprised many of the local teams it played against. Christopher Kamrani has the story of Topaz High, and how a group of high school kids used America's most beloved sport to show that they, too, were Americans.
Read Chris Kamrani's story about Topaz High:
https://theathletic.com/2162093/2020/10/30/topaz-internment-camp-football-team/?source=theleadpodcast
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, prime members, you can listen to the lead, add free on Amazon Music. |
| 0:04.9 | Download the app today. |
| 0:07.6 | Even the Rich is a podcast from Wondery that tells the jaw-dropping stories about the |
| 0:11.4 | tumultuous lives of the world's elite, from the greatest family dynasties to pop culture |
| 0:15.7 | superstars. |
| 0:16.7 | Listen to even the Rich on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:20.8 | Today, we're going back in time nearly 80 years to a dusty desert in Central Utah. |
| 0:35.4 | That's where one of ten internment camps was set up for Japanese Americans during World |
| 0:39.8 | War II, an act that the US has since acknowledged was shameful and wrong. |
| 0:45.5 | And inside that camp, there was a high school football team that played behind barbed wire |
| 0:50.3 | with armed soldiers pointing their guns inward, not outward. |
| 0:54.2 | The athletics Christopher Comrani has the story of Tope as high and how some of the kids |
| 0:59.0 | there used football to show that they belonged, that they were Americans. |
| 1:05.0 | They wrote in their high school yearbooks about how they wanted to show that athletically, |
| 1:11.5 | they're being able to hang with the local teams in the region, primarily made up of farm |
| 1:17.0 | boys, like that they could hang and that they could not only match themselves athletically |
| 1:23.0 | and skill wise, but just to prove that they were good people. |
| 1:28.9 | From wondering on the athletic, I'm Kavita Davidson. |
| 1:31.5 | And I'm Andres Kulto. |
| 1:32.5 | It's Friday, November 6th, and this is The Leaf. |
| 1:36.3 | It felt like something great was happening. |
| 1:40.5 | There was just something about the emotion and the moment. |
... |
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