Author Paul Richter, Fort Missoula Executive Director Matt Lautzenheiser, Shirley Ann Higuchi and Susan Kamei. (Photo: Courtesy of Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation)
A discussion about the history of Japanese immigrants to the United States and a workshop for Montana teachers kicked off the traveling series of events Sept. 25 and 26 sponsored by the Norman Y. Mineta Japanese American Confinement Education program of the National Park Service.
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation partnered for the events with the Historical Museum of Fort Missoula, which operates a museum where Japanese immigrants were detained after the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor. The museum includes the restored courtroom in which Japanese internees underwent loyalty hearings.
A barrack where Japanese and Italian men were held was recently restored thanks to a grant from the National Park Service’s Japanese American Confinement Sites program.
Participating teachers toured Fort Missoula after a workshop in which they were guided through the history of the Japanese American incarceration by author and professor Susan Kamei and Shirley Ann Higuchi, chair of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation.
Paul Richter, author of The Distance Between Our Names, presented a history of the treatment of Japanese immigrants during the workshop. He, Higuchi and Kamei joined Fort Missoula Executive Director Matt Lautzenheiser for a Friday evening panel discussion at the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center at the University of Montana.
Mike Mansfield was a four-term senator from Montana before becoming the longest-serving U.S. ambassador to Japan.
The next event and workshop in the HMWF program will take place in Ann Arbor, Mich., on November 13-14. They are part of a three-year program involving HMWF, the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula, Friends of Minidoka in Idaho, Amache Alliance in Colorado, and the Topaz Museum in Utah.
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, a Smithsonian Affiliate, preserves the site where some 14,000 Japanese Americans were unjustly incarcerated in Wyoming from 1942 through 1945. Their stories are told within the foundation’s museum, Heart Mountain Interpretive Center, and its affiliated Mineta-Simpson Institute located between Cody and Powell. For more information, call the center at (307) 754-8000 or email info@heartmountain.org.
— Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation
