Heart Mountain Relocation Center

World War II

Life in camp

The first inmates arrived in Heart Mountain on August 12, 1942: 6,448 from Los Angeles County; 2,572 from Santa Clara County; 678 from San Francisco; and 843 from Yakima County in Washington. After being assigned a barracks based on the size of their families, they began making small improvements on their new "apartments," hanging bed sheets to create extra "rooms," and stuffing newspaper and rags into cracks in the shoddily constructed walls and floors to keep out dust and cold. Some inmates went so far as to order tools from Sears & Roebuck catalogs in order to make repairs. Each barracks unit contained one light, a wood-burning stove, and an army cot and two blankets for each member of the family. Bathrooms and laundry facilities were located in shared utility halls, and meals were served in communal mess halls, both assigned by block. Armed military police manned the nine guard towers surrounding the camp.

Leadership positions in Heart Mountain were occupied by European-American administrators, although Nisei block managers and Issei councilmen were elected by the inmate population and participated, in a limited capacity, in administration of the camp. Employment opportunities were available in the hospital, camp schools and mess halls, as well as the garment factory, cabinet shop, sawmill and silk screen shop run by camp officials, although most inmates received a rather paltry salary of $12–$19 a month, due to the WRA's decision that the Japanese could not earn more than an army private regardless of job. (Caucasian nurses in the Heart Mountain hospital, for example, were paid $150/month compared to the $19/month given Japanese-American doctors) Additionally, some inmates worked on the unfinished Heart Mountain Canal for the Bureau of Reclamation, or did agricultural work outside the camp.

Children of inmates began school in barrack classrooms in October 1942. Books, school supplies, and furniture were limited. Despite the poor condition of the facilities, attending school offered a sense of normalcy to camp children. In May 1943, the camp high school had been constructed, and the elementary school restructured. The high school, which educated 1,500 students in its first year, featured regular classrooms, a gymnasium and library. Its sports team, including its football team, The Heart Mountain Eagles, eventually competed against other local high school teams.

Other sporting events, movie theaters, religious services, crafting groups, and social clubs kept inmates entertained and provided a distraction from the dullness of camp life. Knitting, sewing, and woodcarving were popular not only for entertainment, but because they allowed inmates to improve their dilapidated living conditions. Among children, Girl and Boy Scout programs flourished, as many Nisei had been members before internment. Heart Mountain's thirteen scout troops and two Cub Scout packs were the most of any of the ten camps. Scouts participated in normal scouting activities such as hiking, craft making, and swimming.

Draft resistance

In early 1943, camp officials began to administer a "Leave Clearance Form," better known as the loyalty questionnaire because of two controversial questions that tried to distinguish loyal and disloyal Japanese Americans. Question 27 asked whether men would be willing to serve in the armed forces, while Question 28 asked inmates to forswear all allegiance to the Emperor of Japan. Many, fearing it was a trick and any answer would be misconstrued, or, offended by the questions' implications, answered "no" to one or both questions, or gave a qualified response like, "I will serve when I am free." Soon after, Kiyoshi Okamoto organized the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee to protest the infringement of Nisei citizen rights, and Frank Emi, Paul Nakadate and others began posting fliers around camp encouraging others not to respond to the questions.

When draft orders began arriving in Heart Mountain, Emi, Okamoto and the other leaders of the Fair Play Committee held public meetings to discuss the unconstitutionality of the incarceration and encourage other inmates to refuse military service until their freedom was restored. On March 25, 1944, twelve Heart Mountain resisters who had not reported for their draft physicals were arrested by U.S. Marshals. Emi and two other Committee members who had not received draft notices (due to their age or domestic status) tried to walk out of camp to highlight their status as prisoners of the government.

In July 1944, in the largest mass trial in Wyoming history, sixty-three Heart Mountain inmates were prosecuted after refusing to show up for their induction and convicted of felony draft evasion. A total of 300 draft resisters from eight WRA camps, including an additional 22 from Heart Mountain sentenced in a subsequent trial, were arrested for this charge, and most served time in federal prison. The seven older leaders of the Fair Play Committee were convicted of conspiracy to violate the Selective Service Act and sentenced to four years in federal prison. While the Poston concentration camp in Arizona had the highest number of resisters of any camp, at 106, Heart Mountain's 85 resisters from a much smaller population gave it the highest overall rate of draft resistance.

Although Heart Mountain is remembered primarily for its organized resistance to the draft, approximately 650 Nisei joined the U.S. Army from this camp, either volunteering or accepting their conscription into the legendary 100th Infantry Battalion, the famed 442nd RCT and MIS. Fifteen of these young men were killed in action and fifty-two wounded. Joe Hayashi and James K. Okubo posthumously received the Medal of Honor for valor in battle, making Heart Mountain the only one of the ten WRA camps to have more than one Medal of Honor recipient. In late 1944, camp inmates erected an Honor Roll in front of the administration building listing the names of these soldiers. This wooden tribute stood for five decades, until the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation removed the deteriorating display for preservation. An accurate reproduction, completed in 2003, now stands in place of the original. The original Honor Roll is being conserved and restored.

The end of the war

By the time Roosevelt rescinded Executive Order 9066 in December 1944 and announced that Japanese Americans could begin returning to the West Coast the following month, many had already left camp, most for outside work or to attend college in the Midwest or East Coast. Beginning in January 1945, internees began to leave Heart Mountain for the West Coast, provided by administrators with $25 and a one-way train ticket to the location they had been picked up from three years earlier. However, even with the earlier group of resettlers, only 2,000 had left by June 1945, and the 7,000 still remaining within Heart Mountain for the most part represented those who were too young or too old to easily relocate. Many Japanese Americans, barred from owning their pre-war homes and farms by discriminatory legislation, had nothing to return to on the West Coast, but they were prohibited from homesteading in Wyoming by an alien land law passed by the state legislature in 1943 (a law that remained in place until 2001). Another Wyoming law excluding them from voting further discouraged Japanese Americans from staying in Wyoming. The last trainload of former inmates left Heart Mountain on November 10, 1945.

Preservation and remembrance

After Heart Mountain closed, most of the land, barracks and agricultural equipment were sold to farmers and former servicemen, who established homesteads on and around the camp site. The Heart Mountain Irrigation Project continued after the war, and much of the camp's surrounding acreage was tilled for irrigation agriculture. Remnants of the hospital complex (including foundations and 3 buildings), a Heart Mountain High School storage shed, a root cellar, the Honor Roll World War II Memorial and a portion of a remodeled barrack are the only buildings still standing today.

The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, established in 1996, has worked to preserve and memorialize the site and events, educate the general public about the Japanese American incarceration, and support research about the incarceration so that future generations can understand the lessons of the Japanese American incarceration experience. The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation is overseen by a 16-member Board of Directors and is led by the Chair, Shirley Ann Higuchi, a descendant of former internees. The board also includes former internees, scholars, and other professionals working on the local and national level. The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation gained National Historic Landmark status for the site in 2007 and on August 20, 2011, opened the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center. The Center features a permanent exhibit that provides an overview of the history of the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans and the background of anti-Asian prejudice in America that led to it. Along with additional rotating exhibits, these photographs, artifacts and oral histories explore the incarceration experience, constitutional and civil rights issues, and the broader issues of race and social justice in America. Visitors can also participate in a walking tour of the site and its remaining structures. Former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta and retired U.S. Senator Alan K. Simpson, who met as Boy Scouts on opposite sides of the barbed wire fence surrounding the Heart Mountain compound, were Honorary Advisors to the Foundation.

The Foundation hosts an annual pilgrimage at Heart Mountain, the first of which coincided with the Interpretive Center's 2011 opening.

Terminology

Since the end of World War II, there has been debate over the terminology used to refer to Heart Mountain and the other camps in which Japanese Americans were incarcerated by the United States Government during the war. Heart Mountain has been referred to as a "War Relocation Center," "relocation camp," "relocation center," "internment camp," "incarceration camp," and "concentration camp," and the controversy over which term is the most accurate and appropriate continues to the present day. Scholars and activists have criticized "internment camp" for being a minimizing, misleading euphemism, as Japanese Americans were not there for protection, performed forced labor, and could not leave.

Notable internees

• Hideo Date (1907–2005), a painter.
• Kathryn Doi (born 1942), Associate Justice of the California Second District Court of Appeals.
• Frank S. Emi (1916–2010), Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee leader and civil rights activist.
• Sadamitsu "S. Neil" Fujita (1921–2010), graphic designer who served in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.
• Evelyn Nakano Glenn (born 1940), a professor of Gender & Women Studies and of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and founding director of the Center for Race and Gender (CRG). Also interned at Gila River.
• Mary Matsuda Gruenewald (1925–2021), memoirist. Also interned at Tule Lake.
• Joe Hayashi (1920–1945), 442nd RCT volunteer posthumously awarded Medal of Honor.
• Bill Hosokawa (1915–2007), author and journalist, editor of the camp newspaper "Heart Mountain Sentinel."
• Momoko Iko (1940–2020), an American playwright.
• Estelle Ishigo (née Peck) (1899–1990), an American artist married to a Nisei.
• George Igawa, leader of the George Igawa Orchestra, a jazz big band formed by musicians interned within the camp, which played for dances around the region.
• George Ishiyama (1914–2003), businessman and former president of Alaska Pulp Corporation. Also interned at Topaz.
• Hikaru Iwasaki (1923–2016), an American photographer.
• Lincoln Kanai (1908—1982), social worker and civil rights activist who brought a legal challenge to the eviction of Japanese Americans from the West Coast.
• Gyomay Kubose (1905–2000), a Buddhist teacher.
• Kiyoshi Kuromiya (1943–2000), an author and civil and social justice advocate.
• Yosh Kuromiya (1923–2018), Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee member who resisted the draft on constitutional grounds and promoted understanding of the Nisei draft resisters in film and public forums.
• Robert Kuwahara (1901–1964), animator.
• Bill Manbo (1908–1992), an amateur photographer.
• Sam Mihara (born 1933), an American author and history educator.
• Norman Mineta (1931–2022), United States Secretary of Transportation under George W. Bush and United States Secretary of Commerce under Bill Clinton.
• Lane Nakano (1925–2005), American soldier turned actor.
• Fusataro Nakaya (1886–1952), medical doctor (1916 graduate of University of Illinois Medical College), member of California Medical Association, Vice President of Los Angeles Japanese Association.
• Shigeki Oka (1878–1959), Issei newspaper publisher who was recruited by the British Armed Forces in World War II.
• Benji Okubo (1904–1975), an American painter, teacher, and landscape designer.
• James K. Okubo (1920–1967), 442nd RCT veteran posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. Also interned at Tule Lake.
• Mary Oyama (1907–1994), a journalist and community organizer.
• Albert Saijo (1926–2011), poet.
• Doris Ota Saito (born 1933), illustrator.
• Nyogen Senzaki (1876–1958), Rinzai Zen monk who was one of the 20th century's leading proponents of Zen Buddhism in the United States.
• Louise Suski (1905–2003), first woman editor-in-chief and English-section editor-in-chief at Rafu Shimpo.
• Teiko Tomita (1896–1990), a tanka poet. Also interned at Tule Lake.
• Otto Yamaoka (1904–1967), an American actor and businessman who worked in Hollywood during the 1930s.