Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
By the early spring, Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans were given
10 days to gather their families, packing only what they could carry, and report to
makeshift assembly centers where they would be deported to camps. Wyoming was
home to a relocation center called Heart Mountain. It was isolated, had means for
a steady water supply, and was an easy place to transport individuals and supplies.
These new dwellings were concentration camps, surrounded by barbed wire, guard
towers, searchlights, and guards with machine guns.
The camp covered more than 4,600 acres and housed 468 barracks. These poorly
assembled, tar-papered buildings were divided into sections. The average room was
20 by 20 feet and was shared by one family, equipped only with cots, one unad-
orned hanging light, and a potbellied stove, which didn't always work. The shel-
ters provided little relief from Wyoming's searing summers and frigid winters. Also
constructed on the site were mess halls, communal bathrooms and showers, laundry
rooms, a hospital, a sewage plant, two places of worship, and even a high school. The
camp at Heart Mountain became Wyoming's third-largest city.
Construction began in June 1942, and by August 11, 1942, the first trainload of
internees arrived. More than 14,000 internees entered the camp during 1942-1945.
Its largest population was nearly 11,000. Despite the dire circumstances and human
rights violations, life at Heart Mountain proved to be a testament to the human spirit.
The internees demonstrated a deep resilience and determination to create and main-
tain a community within its ragged confines. There were general stores, two movie
theaters, barbershops, high school athletic teams, a weekly newspaper, and a demo-
cratically elected camp government. They also made the most of their barren sur-
roundings, extending the irrigation system, planting 27 different types of fruits and
vegetables, and raising profitable hog and poultry farms. The cities of Powell and
Cody, although never entirely welcoming to these outsiders, benefited economically
from the camp and its internees by purchasing inexpensive but necessary goods, like
meat and produce, and by hiring the internees as cheap labor to pick their crops. Dur-
ing the three years the camp was open, 552 births and 185 deaths were registered.
Internees were allowed to leave beginning January 1945. Each internee was gran-
ted $25 and a bus ticket to his or her destination, though many internees no longer
had any other place to call home. The last internees left the camp on November 10,
1945.
