On October 8, 2019, I attended a lecture by Sam Mihara at Laramie County Community College. Sam is a Japanese American born in the United States prior to World War II. He and his family were sent to live at Heart Mountain internment camp outside Cody, Wyoming, for over three years during the war. He talked about his family and background, what it was like to live at Heart Mountain, what happened after returning to San Francisco after Heart Mountain, where some of the detainees are now, and what he is doing to make sure that America does not forget this period of history. He even talked about what is happening now with current refugees at our borders. Below are my notes from his talk.
Sam’s grandfather was able to break out of the working class and send his son to a good school. Sam’s father was then able to get a job in San Francisco as an editor. Around the beginning of World War II, there was a movement of hatred toward Germans and Japanese. Dr. Seuss even made cartoons against them, and there were hateful billboards around the country.
On February 11, 1942, the US government gave authority to the military to remove whomever they chose. No specifics were given. There were three Lieutenant Generals over various parts of the United States:
- Lt. General Drum was on the East Coast. He did not remove any Japanese families.
- Lt. General DeWitt was on the West Coast. He hated the Japanese. Even if you were only 1/16 Japanese, then he considered you fully Japanese.
- Lt General Emmons was in Hawaii. 40% of the population on the island was Japanese so he didn’t remove any of these families.
Lt. General DeWitt told Japanese families in his western area that they needed to pack one hand carry bag per person and report to the bus station on a certain date. He didn’t tell them anything else like where they were going, for how long, or what to pack. Japanese American soldiers who fought for the US had to say ‘goodbye’ to their families and had no idea where their families would be taken. The families had to sell their homes fast and cheap or have a friend take care of them. Fred Korematsu went to a surgeon to have his face turned white in order to avoid the internment camp. (When Fred went to trial for avoiding the camp, the Supreme Court ruled against him because “protection against espionage more important than justice”.)
While the families waited for the designated day to arrive, they did not know that ten internment camps were being built around the West. It took three months for 2,000 workers to build the camps. Sam believes there are three reasons for these camps: Prejudice, Hysteria, and Failure of leadership.
On their designated day, Sam and his family boarded the bus. It took three days and nights to travel from San Francisco to the Heart Mountain camp in Wyoming. When they arrived at the camp, they found 450 barracks to hold 27 people per barrack. (That’s about 12,000 people in the Heart Mountain camp.) Sam, his brother, and his parents had one room to live in that was 20-feet x 20-feet. It had 4 cots and a coal burning stove. There was no insulation and gaps in the siding. Remember… this is Wyoming. It gets COLD in Wyoming in the winter, and they were not prepared for the cold weather – nor did they have warm clothes for the winter. In that first winter, it got down to -28 degrees.
The camp had no grammar school and one high school. There were 15 toilets in a single room – with no partitions – for 300 people. They were fed powdered milk, pickled vegetables, and potatoes. After some time, they convinced the government to allow them to grow their own food. They had a hospital in the camp, but the only doctors and nurses came from the detainee ranks. During the 3+ years, there were 550 babies born. Sam’s father became blind due to glaucoma. Sam’s grandfather died in the camp due to colon cancer. (They only had laxatives to treat him.) The detainees also built a school to teach the children in the camp. Guards with guns were placed around the perimeter to ensure that no one escaped because the people in Cody and Powell (towns in Wyoming near Heart Mountain) were not happy about the Japanese camps so near to them. They were scared the detainees may escape and hurt them and their families. There were hate signs all through the town.
During the war, 800 detainees volunteered or were drafted to fight in the war for the Americans. 67 of them refused the draft and were sent to federal prison. (They were later pardoned by President Truman.)
James Purcell (attorney) filed a lawsuit on behalf of Mitsuye Endo (a Japanese American detainee at another camp). When the lawsuit was won, the government let everyone leave the camps. When the detainees returned home, they found that many homes had been damaged or items had been stolen from them. Many people could not find jobs, and many committed suicide because of the shame in not being able to care for their families.
After the camps closed, the government tried to hide them by selling off the barracks. They also hid the many, many photos taken by Dorothy Lange (photographer) during this time. But the detainees would not let the government forget. They demanded redress for many, many years, and they finally got it when Reagan was President.
Some of the people who were held in camps during this time include:
- Willie Ito who worked for Disney and made “Lady and the Tramp”. (He was also a friend of Sam’s at the camp.)
- Norm Mineta who was Transportation Secretary from 2001 to 2006.
- Judge Lance Ito who is known for the OJ Simpson trial. (His father was one of the detainees who ended up committing suicide.)
- Sam himself was a rocket engineer at Boeing.
- Helene Mihara – one of the poster girls in Dorothy’s photos who became Sam’s wife!
When Sam finally returned to Wyoming 50 years later, he noticed that the anti-Japanese signs that had been in Cody and the surrounding areas when he had been detained there had been replaced by signs saying, “Welcome Japanese Americans”.
In addition to helping setup a museum at Heart Mountain to share the stories of these detainees and this time in our history, he has visited many of the detention centers that are now big news in our country. He said that the families are separated in these detention centers, and he said that at least for him, he was with his parents during his detention. He said that eighteen people are piled together to sleep on floors with leaking roofs. And 1800 children have been assaulted. It’s shameful. He also had a warning… this could happen to anyone or any group of people. He was a US citizen and was still detained for over three years.
If you are interested in more about Sam and Heart Mountain, Sam has written a book entitled “Blindsided” which is available for sale on his website at: http://sammihara.com/.
