For the last two and a half years, I've spent most of my non-teaching, non-administrative time on a project very close to my heart: the creation of a new museum at the site of the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Park County, Wyoming, where some 14,000 people of Japanese ancestry, almost 10,000 of them U.S. citizens, were incarcerated as suspected spies and saboteurs on the basis of their ethnicity between 1942 and 1945. My task has been to oversee the creation of the museum's content -- its core exhibit and its introductory film.
On Saturday, we will open the Heart Mountain Interpretive Learning Center. We expect crowds of well more than 1,000, of whom some 200 will be elderly former internees, many of them returning to the site for the first time in more than 65 years. Our speakers at the opening ceremony and the evening's banquet include Tom Brokaw, Senator Daniel Inouye, Judge Lance Ito (whose parents were incarcerated at Heart Mountain), Dr. Melba Vasquez (President of the American Psychological Association), Irene Hirano Inouye (founding CEO of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles), and two lifelong friends who met as boy scouts at Heart Mountain -- Alan Simpson, the retired Wyoming Senator, and Norman Mineta, most recently the Secretary of Transportation and a former Heart Mountain internee.
We'll also have some words of welcome from an American who contributed significantly to the movement to redress the wrongs our government committed in World War II:
I hope to have a bit more to say about the Grand Opening next week. For the moment, though, I'll just encourage everyone who someday plans to visit Yellowstone National Park to put the Heart Mountain Interpretive Learning Center on your travel agenda. We're just an hour from its east entrance, just outside the town of Cody. I think you'll find it a fascinating, provocative, and emotional experience.
Congratulations, Eric! This is very exciting. I'm sorry that I can't be there to see the ceremonies, which I'm certain will be moving.
Posted by: Alfred Brophy | August 18, 2011 at 05:51 PM
I second Al's sentiment (and what a lovely name!).
Posted by: Patrick S. O'Donnell | August 18, 2011 at 06:38 PM
Congratulations, Eric! This is very exciting. I'm sorry that I can't be there to see the ceremonies, which I'm certain will be moving. islamic hotels...
Posted by: islamic hotels | August 18, 2011 at 10:03 PM
I've participated in the Tour de Wyoming bicycle event a couple of times in northern Wyoming and on one occasion had the chance to pedal past the location. The isolation is breathtaking - and I speak as someone who lives and teaches in sparsely populated southeastern Wyoming. I can't begin to imagine the terror surrounding relocation to such a desolate place.
Posted by: Michael C. Duff | August 19, 2011 at 09:07 AM
I am a member of Providence Friends Meeting, a Quaker meeting just outside Philadelphia, PA. One of our members, George Oye, who was born in the U.S. of Japanese ancestry, was interned during WWII in Jerome, AK and Gila, AZ. George was introduced to the Quakers because they were among the few assisting internees and monitoring conditions in the camps. Based on his experiences, George decided to live his life according to Quaker values. Thanks so much for all the work you have done to bring the Learning Center to fruition and for your post, which I will share with George's family and with other members of our Meeting.
Posted by: Leslie Friedman | August 19, 2011 at 10:39 AM
This interpretive center is long overdue. Glad to see this happen. New Mexico is trying to do similar work with grant money. A new video about the DOJ-run Santa Fe Internment Camp has just been completed -- the first video about the all-men camp. Check out here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/287538697/prisoners-and-patriots-japanese-internment-in-sant
Posted by: Neil Simon | August 22, 2011 at 06:20 PM