Katie Masano Hill
On June 10, 2025, in the Joint Agriculture, State and Public Lands & Water Resources Committee in the Wyoming State Legislature, Rep. John Winter (R-28th District) made the following remark in relation to an upcoming visit to the Heart Mountain Wyoming Interpretive Center, “If you’re gonna go to the Jap camp, that’s what I call it, we need to leave here by about 12:30.” (See related story here.)
On June 12, he provided this apology: “The term that I used just slipped out of my mouth as that is what it has always been referred to in my world as a kid. I knew better, and I am sorry. I didn’t mean to upset anyone. The Interpretive Center at Heart Mountain has a great program for disseminating information, and I learned a lot that day.”
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation accepts and appreciates the apology and hopes that the visit by Rep. Winter and the other legislators served as a meaningful opportunity to deepen their understanding of the Japanese American incarceration experience.
As a Gosei, fifth-generation descendant of those who were incarcerated at Heart Mountain and Tule Lake, I want to make it clear that my family was not sent to a “Jap Camp.” The experiences of more than 125,000 Japanese Americans do not deserve to be referenced with this derogatory slur, especially at the site of shame where many passed and never made it back home.
My uncle, Yoshi Nakatsuka, was one of those individuals. He died at 24 years old, and his funeral was held at Heart Mountain. The mistreatment and abusive camp experiences that led to his death do not deserve to be referred to as time in a “Jap Camp.” He deserves better.
I am one year younger than my Uncle Yoshi. I always wonder what his life could have been if it had not been stolen from him.
The use of this slur perpetuates the loss of dignity and humanity that those incarcerated endured. My Baachan, as a child, was forced to give up her Buddhist religion, her privacy and the innocence of girlhood. She came of age behind barbed wire, in communal toilets and classrooms where dignity was stripped away daily. That trauma never left her — not at 18, not at 50, not even when she passed at 90 years old. She deserves better.
As the Norman Y. Mineta Fellow with the National JACL, I have an obligation to speak out on this grave wrong. Secretary Mineta was a Heart Mountain survivor, champion of civil liberties and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His life was defined by service, courage and patriotism. He deserves better.
We recognize the apology. But words without transformation are empty. The survivors suffered enough. The least we can do now is speak of them with the dignity they were denied.
Please do better. Our ancestors deserve it.
My family at the funeral for my Great-Uncle Yoshi at Heart Mountain
Photo: George and Frank Hirahara photographs (sc14b01f0095n02). Washington State University Libraries’ MASC, Pullman, WA.
Katie Masano Hill is the JACL Norman Y. Mineta Policy Fellow. She is based in the organization’s Washington, D.C., office.