Heart Mountain Relocation Center

Pre-war history The land that would become the Heart Mountain War Relocation Center was originally part of the Shoshone Project, an irrigation project under the auspices of the Bureau of Reclamation. In 1897, of land surrounding the Shoshone River in northwestern Wyoming was purchased by William "Buffalo Bill" Cody and Nate Salisbury, who in May 1899 acquired water rights to irrigate surrounding Cody, Wyoming. After the project proved too costly for the original investors, the Wyoming State Board of Land Commissioners petitioned the federal government to take it over. The rights for the Cody-Salisbury tract were transferred to the Secretary of the Interior in 1904 and the Shoshone Project was approved later that year as one of the earliest Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) projects. In 1937 during the Great Depression, the BOR used private contractors and Civilian Conservation Corps laborers to begin construction on the Shoshone Canyon Conduit and the Heart Mountain Canal, as one of a number of governmental infrastructure projects. The conduit, spanning , was completed in September 1938. Construction on the unfinished canal stopped after the United States entered World War II. Executive Order 9066 Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which authorized military commanders to create zones from which "any or all persons may be excluded." The War Department had requested this and designated Western Washington and Oregon, southern Arizona, and all of California as Exclusion Zones on March 2, 1942. Four days later, the executive order informally extended to Alaska, covering the entire West Coast of the United States. It defined Japanese Americans, Italian Americans and German Americans as peoples to be excluded from these areas. Soon after the War Department initiated the removal of over 110,000 Japanese Americans from these areas, forcing them into temporary "assembly centers" run by the Wartime Civil Control Administration. Typically, these centers were hastily converted large public spaces, such as fairgrounds and horse racing tracks, while construction on Heart Mountain and the other more permanent "relocation centers" were completed. Building Heart Mountain On May 23, 1942, the War Department announced that one of the camps for displaced Japanese Americans would be located in Wyoming, and several communities, hoping to capitalize on internee labor for irrigation and land development projects, vied for the site. More than 2,000 laborers, including men employed by the Harza Engineering Company of Chicago and the Hamilton Bridge Company of Kansas City, began work on June 8, under the direction of the Army Corps of Engineers. The workers enclosed of arid buffalo grass and sagebrush with a high barbed wire fence and nine guard towers. Within this perimeter, 650 military-style barracks were laid out in a street grid, with administrative, hospital, educational, and utility facilities, and 468 residential dormitories to house the internees. All of the buildings were electrified, which was at the time a rarity in Wyoming, but due to time constraints and a largely unskilled workforce, the majority of these "buildings" were poorly constructed. Army higher-ups gave the site's chief engineer only sixty days to complete the project, and newspaper ads recruiting laborers promised jobs "if you can drive a nail" while workers boasted that it took them only 58 minutes to build an apartment barracks. Thousands of acres of surrounding land were designated for agricultural purposes, as the center was expected for the most part to be self-sufficient. ==World War II==

Life in camp steps, during a school dance held in the high school gymnasium, November 1943. 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. 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. 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. policies and the Selective Service Act as it applied to camp inmates. This letter to local Selective Service boards in California was apparently prepared as a model for internees to use to protest their eligibility for the draft. (NARA 292806) 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. 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. 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. 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 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. ==See also==