HEART MOUNTAIN CHRONICLES: The History of a Japanese Relocation Center
By Bernard and James Murphy.
This is the story of a city. Heart Mountain Chronicles is a meticulously researched account of the construction and operation of one of the ten prison camps built by the U.S. Government in the summer of 1942 to incarcerate persons of Japanese ancestry living along the West Coast after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The book details the planning, administration, and services that were developed to intern 11,000 people at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming. It’s the story of the physical as well as the social infrastructure that the internees created for themselves: schools, shops, a newspaper, hospital, fire department, and a system of self-government. It is a fascinating study of a temporary city, the resilience and creativity of the Japanese Americans interned there, and all the accompanying community services that they created from scratch in a short time with few resources.
The Heart Mountain Relocation Center was constructed in just 60 days and became the third-largest city in Wyoming at the time. Japanese evacuees were interned there from August 12, 1942, until November 10, 1945, when the last of its residents left to rebuild their interrupted lives. Although the purpose of the Camp ceased to exist after the war, Heart Mountain continued to house others until the mid-1950s. After WWII, the Camp was managed by the Bureau of Reclamation, and its remaining facilities were used to support the construction of the Shoshone Reclamation Project, which provides irrigation for crops in Wyoming’s Big Horn Basin.
Included is a chapter describing the efforts that led to its listing on the National Registry of Historic Places in 1985 and its designation as a National Historic Landmark in 2006.
Paper: 678 pp.
also available;
Heart Mountain Sutra Stones Tote
Legacy of Heart Mountain (DVD)
