Letter from Okinawa after Russia quake

Our 14-and-under youth baseball team from South Pasadena had just taken the lead with a four-run rally in the second inning when my son stepped up to the plate.

- Joe Mathews

Then a siren rang out — and wouldn't stop.

Our players, our parents, our coach, and I (the team organiser-manager) were unsure what it meant.

We didn’t want to stop playing. We had travelled 6,500 miles (10,460km) from Southern California to Okinawa to play against local teams. The trip was spurred by two of our former players, whose families had moved back to Japan (one to Okinawa) in recent years.

And that day, we were excited to be playing in the town of Kunigami, at Kaigin Stadium, spring training home of the Japanese team for which Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani played. It would be our last time ever playing with our Okinawa-based teammate, a pitcher, who was taking the mound later in the game.

But with the siren blaring on July 31, the umpire stopped play, stalling our momentum. We escaped the humidity in an air-conditioned clubhouse and were admiring a photo of Ohtani from 2014 spring training when our Japanese-speaking parents gave us the news:

A tsunami warning had gone out for Okinawa, triggered by a massive earthquake off Russia’s far-east coast.