The Tokyo Series allowed a community with roots in the Wrigleyville community to feel even more connected to their heritage.

Kay Kawaguchi has seen the Japanese American community in Lakeview at its peak.

“I was just thinking about it, a couple of [square block area] in my neighborhood, over a dozen Japanese Americans around there,” the cultural coordinator at the Japanese American Service Committee (JASC) in the West Ridge neighborhood said. “Now, after 54 years, I’m the only one.

“It’s really changed. But those days, quite a few Japanese Americans lived around there and go to work, go to school.”

[WATCH: Tokyo Series, JASC help highlight history of Japanese Americans in Chicago]

Japanese Americans have a complex history both in Chicago and in the United States as a whole. During World War II, then-president Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued an executive order that forcibly removed over 100,000 Japanese Americans from their homes and relocated them to internment camps in the interior of the nation. As the war ended, the camps were slowly evacuated, and Chicago became a relocation destination.

“Chicago was a big hub because there were a lot of schools here,” Erik Matsunaga, a Chicago Japanese American historian said. “It’s a big university town. There’s a lot of jobs here – it’s a big manufacturing town. It was the center of the transportation industry, and it was kind of the center of the printing industry. So, we had all these things come together.

“It was also known for its racial tolerance. Despite the fact Chicago is and was a segregated city, for the most part, people got along with each other.”

The area around Wrigley Field became a Japanese American community with shops and restaurants. But as time went on, the community left the neighborhood, moving to the outskirts of the city or to the suburbs and those businesses closed. But the presence remains in the city.

JASC opened in 1946 to help Japanese immigrants and American-born children coming to Chicago and those that left the internment camps and assisted with housing, jobs and helping the community. Today, JASC continues to help the Japanese American community and provides social services to the Chicago community, offering activities and more for children and adults.

Their efforts with JASC have helped create a stronger bond between the younger generation and their roots.

“It’s very important for us to cultivate the culture for the younger generations, especially the cultural parts,” Yuri Yatsuda, the children’s program event coordinator at JASC said. “We try to pass onto the younger generation – I’m originally from Tokyo, Japan – and I would like to pass along the Japanese cultures to the Japanese American children around this neighborhood.”

Baseball and the Tokyo Series have helped highlight the modern Japanese American community and how much it has grown in the last 80-plus years – especially with the success of players like Shota Imanaga and Seiya Suzuki.

“From a legacy, Japanese American community standpoint – and what I mean by legacy is the community that came as a result of resettlement during World War II, it’s amazing,” Matsunaga said. “Because, we came here as villains and [Suzuki and Imanaga] are coming here as heroes.

“To see that shift in a couple of generations, it shows how much our society has advanced.”

Check out the full feature with JASC on the Marquee Sports Network app and YouTube.