Originally featured in Points West magazine in Summer 2008
Jack Richard photograph of a mother and son at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center
On August 12, 1942, the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Park County, Wyoming, between the towns of Cody and Powell, opened its gates to Japanese-Americans who had been forced from their West Coast homes by the U.S. government after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
The center had a hospital, local government, schools, churches, football and basketball teams, scouting groups, and two movie theaters. It wasn’t long before Heart Mountain would swell to Wyoming’s third largest city. At that time it housed nearly 11,000 citizen and alien internees in its tarpaper barracks and barbed-wire enclosures.
Photographed by Jack Richard in 1942, Sets Murakami stands holding her son Richard with barracks in the background. Jack Richard Collection. PN.89.111.21237.8
Heart Mountain Interpretive Center
The Heart Mountain Interpretive Center, located between Cody and Powell, Wyoming, tells the story of life at Heart Mountain through the eyes of those Japanese and Japanese Americans confined there during WWII using photographs, artifacts, oral histories, and interactive exhibits. It “provides an overview of the wartime relocation of Japanese Americans, including the background history of anti-Asian prejudice in America and the factors leading to their enforced relocation and confinement.” Learn more about the center and plan a visit at www.heartmountain.org.
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