Kerry Yo Nakagawa
Kerry Yo Nakagawa is the director of the non-profit Nisei Baseball Research Project (NBRP). Founded in 1996, the mission of the NBRP to bring awareness and education about Japanese American incarceration during WWII through the prism of baseball and our multimedia projects.
While coaching his son’s little league team in Fresno, California, Kerry was inspired to preserve the legacy of Japanese American baseball and culture for future generations, and that evolved into a full-time, non-profit organization.
An author, filmmaker, and historian, Kerry describes himself as a multimedia person and takes tremendous pride with his projects of passion.
He is the founding curator of the Diamonds in the Rough international exhibit that has been displayed at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, Japan Hall of Fame in Tokyo, and museums around the country. To make the exhibit more interactive, he produced and directed the Diamonds in the Rough documentary with his Godpapa Noriyuki “Pat” Morita.
Nakagawa wrote the book Through A Diamond, 100 Years of Japanese American Baseball and co-produced two curriculum guides with Stanford University’s SPICE organization.
He produced a five-year labor of love movie American Pastime. The independent film won the “audience favorite” in San Francisco.
Bill Staples, Jr.
Bill Staples, Jr. is a board member for the NBRP. Bill is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) in Arizona with a passion for researching and telling the untold stories of the “international pastime.” His areas of expertise include Japanese American and Negro Leagues baseball history as a context for exploring the themes of civil rights, cross-cultural relations and globalization.
He is also board member for the Japanese American Citizens League-Arizona Chapter, chairman of the SABR Asian Baseball Committee, and research contributor to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City.
Bill lives in Chandler, Arizona, with his wife and two children, where he proudly served on the City of Chandler Parks & Recreation Board. In 2006 his proposal to name Nozomi Park was approved by the Chandler City Council. “Nozomi” is the Japanese word for “hope” and was selected to honor Japanese Americans interned in Arizona during WWII and the role baseball played in helping to create a sense of normalcy behind barbed wire.
Visit his blog at zenimura.com.