Take MCC out to the Ballgame
A great baseball-filled day was had by all on at Lowell's Lelacheur Park recently, with a special summer event related to MCC’s Common Book, When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka.
The event, called "American Pastime: On Film & In Person," was jointly sponsored by MCC's Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) Program, MCC's Office of Student Life, and the New England Chapter of the Japanese-American Citizens League (NE-JACL). In attendance were MCC students, staff, faculty, alums, and a diverse group of NE-JACL members of all ages - including a few members who were former internees during World War II and another who served in the famous 442nd Infantry Division in World War II, an all-Japanese-American unit that fought valiantly and are the most highly decorated unit in the history of the U.S. military.
The day began at 10 a.m. in MCC's Federal Building Assembly Room for a showing of the 2007 Hollywood movie, American Pastime, a film about the role baseball played in Utah’s Topaz Internment Camp, which housed thousands of Japanese-Americans during World War II. (Topaz happens to be the same camp where the fictional family was held in Julie Otsuka’s novel, When the Emperor Was Divine - MCC’s Common Book). While this Hollywood film is fiction, American Pastime depicts life inside the internment camps, where baseball was one of the major diversions from the reality of the internees’ lives. The film was incredibly moving, realistic, thought-provoking, and uplifting, and the audience couldn’t stop talking about it afterwards.
Following the movie, participants mingled, discussed their reactions to the film, and shared stories of their own personal experiences as they enjoyed a delicious, buffet lunch of Japanese-American food.
And after the lunch, participants headed to LeLacheur Park for an afternoon Lowell Spinners baseball game! Although the red-hot Spinners lost, the group had a wonderful time at the game and Student Senator Rosie Austin even won a trivia contest between innings! And it was so nice to see our groups’ names (Middlesex CC & NE-JACL) put up together on the big board at LeLacheur Park!
Baseball - the pastime of America, MCC, and beyond!
