INDEPENDENCE, California (Kyodo) -- A baseball event featuring two amateur games was held Saturday at the site of a World War II-era incarceration camp in California to increase awareness of the lives of Japanese Americans who were confined in the facility more than 80 years ago.

Four teams from Japanese American baseball leagues in the state participated in the games at the former Manzanar camp in a desert area near the Nevada border, playing on a field restored to its wartime condition under a project led by the U.S. National Park Service.

Dan Kwong, 69, a performance artist and longtime baseball player, was among those who helped reconstruct the ball field and organize the event.

Kwong grew up hearing stories of Manzanar from his mother and her family, who were taken there after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

Upon hearing that the U.S. government planned to restore the historic baseball field, which incarcerees at Manzanar had made and used during their time at the camp, Kwong immediately wanted to be involved. By early this year, he was leading the field restoration, organizing volunteers and planning the inaugural doubleheader event.

Along with other volunteers and National Park Service employees at Manzanar National Historic Site, Kwong worked to re-create the baseball field in as authentic a condition as possible, complete with a backstop, watch tower and bleachers as documented in old photos.

Kwong hopes the games will "bring wider attention to the Japanese American experience during the war."

One of Saturday's games was between the Li'l Tokio Giants and the Lodi JACL Templars, while the other was an all-star game featuring players drawn from the state's northern and southern teams in the Nisei Athletic Union, a Japanese American sports organization.

Before the game, Kwong gathered the players, telling them "You are the first people to play ball here in over 80 years...I hope you will just soak it in and feel the weight of what we are doing here."

Reid Nakano, a 24-year-old resident of California, played catcher for the Li'l Tokio Giants. His grandfather, who recently died, was an incarceree at Manzanar.

Nakano said that this "made it even more special" to have played in the game. "I wouldn't have driven four hours to play in just any game."

In 1942, then President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 into law, resulting in the incarceration of some 120,000 people of Japanese descent in camps across the United States.

Over 10,000 such incarcerees were held at Manzanar while it was in operation from 1942 to 1945. In addition to constructing the ball field, they formed leagues and played baseball and softball against each other as a diversion amid the harsh circumstances.