Heart Mountain rises not far from the outskirts of Cody, Wyoming, gateway to Yellowstone National Park and the self-proclaimed Rodeo Capital of the World. Not far away is what remains of a dark page in American history: the Heart Mountain Japanese Internment Camp. One of the few dilapidated buildings left over is an ominous tall red brick chimney on a bluff. It’s the humble indication of the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center Museum near Cody, WY.
The highway runs parallel to railroad tracks near here. On the biggest weekend of the area’s year, July 4th, it was hard to believe that while tourists in cargo shorts and Crocs swarmed the bars and waved at passing floats at any one of three parades, or stood for the National Anthem before the start of the nightly rodeo what that chimney had been a part of only a few generations back.
Almost Nothing Remains of the Japanese Internment Camps Today
In 1942, shortly after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and catapulted the United States of America into World War Two, years of timid neutrality ended and the US became a major player in the allied forces. Over 140,000 Japanese Americans were shipped to any one of ten internment camps scattered througout the nation to wait out the duration of the war. It was said to have been in the interest of national security.
The namesake of the camp is a lone mountain peak not far from what would soon become one of the three largest cities in Wyoming. 14,000 first and second generation Japanese Americans were taken to Heart Mountain by truck, bus, and also those non-descript looking train tracks. The echoes of what was happening in other parts of the world at the time are undeniable.
Today, as we walked on the remains of the site the sun illuminated Heart Mountain. A peak bathed in a pallet of desert browns, rust iron, golds and greens. Ethereal against the dark sky of an impending rainstorm just beyond it.
On a July 4th weekend, an American flag snaps in the wind flying over the names of those who passed away while kept prisoner here. The Issei and Nissei, first and second generation Americans. A field stands where the majority of the camp one teemed with people, making the best of their situation, having left their homes and businesses—many with a sense of patriotism and a belief that they were helping the war effort. All the while their government was viewing them with suspicion that ties to Japan would undermine the safety of other Americans.
Just a Few Scattered Ruins at Heart Mountain Interpretive Center
Barely a trace of the foundations remain today, where once row upon row of barracks housed sleeping quarters, communal kitchens, or latrines, surrounded by barbed wire, guard towers, and incredible distances in inhospitable terrain which separated the inhabitants from the eyes of the public. Slowly being reclaimed by the land, the evidence of this place has been disappearing for over seventy years, reduced for the most part to a footnote in history.
A Sea of Faces from the Past
Upon entering the Heart Mountain Interactive Heritage Center, the first thing you notice are the faces. Though they are black and white, the cut outs are sharp, with every detail distinct and unmistakeable; life-sized. The people of these images wear the same clothes you might recognize from your grandparent’s old photographs. Men in suit jackets or crisp white shirts and trousers. Women in floral dresses or skirts and nice shoes. The looks on the faces of the children are the most haunting, since they betray the unspoken confusion and tension which the adults seem to mask so well.
Exhibits of propaganda and government sponsored racism were ubiquitous for the time. Out in the open and seemingly a point of national pride at the time. Displays of politcal cartoons and posters which worked to dehumanize the Japanese and show the grotesque, inhuman image other Americans were meant to believe. It all stands in stark contrast to the images of people dressed as other Americans dressed at the time, being evicted from their homes and businesses for their race and the potential threat to the USA.
Fear and Propaganda
Copies of governmental policies and correspondence between governors, congressmen, and other statesmen are on display to show the rancor against Japanese Americans, calling for a swift and ruthless response. Again echoing the “Final solution” to the “Jewish question” our enemies on other continents were executing, unbeknownst to us.
The records show that even the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was being interpreted over the years to exclude them simply because they were neither black nor white and therefore not extended to Asians. Policies that had been in practice since the time of the Transcontinental Railroad, when all the Chinese laborers were sent packing once the job was done.
Naturalization was not an option to the Issei and only their children, the Nissei were afforded such a right, but those rules could be bent. Rights seem to have a way to become guidelines when the actions of government are dictated by fear.
A World Apart: World War II
For fifteen minutes, we watched a short film about the first-hand experiences of some of the residents of the camp, from the lives they left behind to daily life in the camp, and what awaited them after the war finally ended. For many who led their lives in sunny locations like southern California, the cold, windswept plains and mountains of northern Wyoming were a difficult transition. With five families sharing a barracks, each with a pot-bellied stove and a single entrance, the brutal landscape was unlike anything they had ever experienced. Even today for those living in this part of the country voluntarily, it takes a certain kind of mindset and fortitude to withstand this climate.
The climate of the nation was not as uniform as propaganda may have had everyone believe. Many people were outspoken, at least those who knew about the internment camps. The Quakers were vocal against the camps, and later even helped to rebuild the lives of those affected by the camps. Even in an age where history has held FDR in favor as being a nearly messianic President ending the Great Depression and instrumental in winning World War II, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt herself spoke against the camps.
Some of the interred enlisted in the US military, fighting in Europe, where their loyalties came under less scrutiny, and showing no less heroism or bravery in battle than their white counterparts. These conditions led to resistance—a very American trait, and one which has been celebrated in our history classes. 23 Japanese American men refused the draft and opted instead to be tried and convicted, spending the next three years in prison. Trading one set of bars for another. They were released in 1947, and thirty years later given a full pardon by President Carter, though many of them had already passed away. Ironically enough, anit-American groups began to form within the camp, propagated by disillusionment of their country and how they were being treated.
Aftermath of Japanese Internment Camps
When their time at Heart Mountain ended in November 1945, three months after the surrender of Emperor Hirohito, the barracks were emptied and these Americans were given a bus ticket and $25 to start their new lives. Most returned home to find that their homes and businesses had been stolen. Some were offered a paltry compensation of around $102 for the loss of their property. Many never recovered from the experience, finding the country still staunchly anti-Japanese, cast out of the American dream.
I couldn’t help but think of a conversation I had in the late 1990’s with a great uncle who had asked what subjects I was taking in college. When I told him I was learning Japanese, he replied, “I don’t think I would ever have a reason to learn that language. I can never forgive those people for what they did at Pearl Harbor.” The anger and hatred was still fresh, even though at the time, Japan was one of our greatest allies.
Heart Mountain Interpretive Center: A Painful Reminder
Indoctrinated. Ingrained. Glossed over by history that is taught in schools. World War Two is boiled down to the martyrdom of Roosevelt, the beaches of Normandy and the Pacific, and the final act of vaporizing two cities, which overshadowed the following decades of the Cold War underneath that particular cloud.
The narrative was used to cut our own people apart from each other. Immigrants. Patriots. This displacement of people echoed the actions of our enemies overseas during the same war, and later our new enemies, the Soviets, during the Cold War. I spoke later with a woman who held onto the belief that so many were probably conspirators against the US with the Japanese Empire that the government had no other choice. I couldn’t help but see those faces in the photos. Children. Old men. Mothers laughing together in their traditional silk kimonos during festivals held in the camps. The young men who enlisted and died during their service.
The Heart Mountain Interpretive Center Museum
The museum illustrated continuing prejudices against Asian Americans in the time of the current pandemic. Every wave of immigrants has suffered a similar stigma, with newcomers being stigmatized by diseases from dysentery to COVID. What I saw was more an echo of how easily people can be swayed by fear. How quickly a dream can become a nightmare when words like “safety” and “security” are bandied about. How people can choose sides in what is possibly the most racially, economically, and politically divided time in our nation’s short history. Anyone’s faces could have been in those pictures for any reason, and yet a summer wind blows across a lonely hillside where people endured this horror and even now each of us teeters on awakening from a dream.
Heart Mountain Interpretive Center: A Stark Contrast in Past and Present
The museum presents artifacts and accounts of the stories of real people and their experiences. Facts as raw and unkind as the Wyoming winters. We walked along that hill on July 3rd. Just a day before everyone in town would be celebrating Independence Day, many celebrating the end of a year under lockdown. Out of state license plates with tourists flooding into a place where they are hoping to enjoy the freedoms they had been missing out on in their own states for the last year and a half. I had come to write about rodeos and parades and the enduring spirit of the West on the first post lockdown summer. I was hoping to find an All-American weekend in a town which couldn’t embody that ideal any better.
What I saw at Heart Mountain was something familiar staring right back at me from even recent history. More than the faces of children trying to make sense of the strange new changes, and more than the adults complying with new rules begrudgingly as they masked their feelings to convince their loved ones that everything was fine. Resonant. Little details that you notice if you pay attention.
A Land Displaced
It felt good to be outside, feeling the cool mist of the storm on the wind, hearing the thunder rolling for what seemed like forever. Heart Mountain loomed majestically in the distance and I couldn’t help but wonder how those interred here felt seeing a thing of such beauty, framed in barbed wire and so far from home. A land which once belonged to other hardy people who were also displaced by governmental practices, moved away from home and forgotten.
There is a lot to unpack from the experience. It’s a reminder of just how fragile this dream really is.
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