Hitoshi “Moe” Yonemura (right) is one of the 15 soldiers from Heart Mountain who will be honored in the upcoming “Faces of the Fallen” exhibit. (Photo: National Archives)
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation has received two National Park Service grants that will support projects to honor the sacrifices of Japanese American soldiers, support educational work with 10 partners and restore its historic hospital complex.
A $987,737 grant from the Norman Y. Mineta Japanese American Confinement Education program will support “Patriotism Under Fire: Expanding the Public’s Understanding of the Japanese American Incarceration,” which includes “Faces of the Fallen,” an online and physical exhibit dedicated to the Japanese American soldiers who were incarcerated in U.S. concentration camps and then died while fighting for the United States overseas. The program will also support educational work and public events conducted by Heart Mountain’s 10 partners, the Amache Alliance, Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial Foundation, Fred T. Korematsu Institute, Friends of Minidoka, Historical Museum at Fort Missoula, Jerome Rohwer Committee, Japanese American Confinement Sites Consortium, National Japanese American Memorial Foundation, Poston Community Alliance and the Topaz Museum.
“Norm taught me the importance of coming together and collaborating with fellow stakeholders,” HMWF Board Chair Shirley Ann Higuchi said. “That is why I am thrilled that our 10 partners — ranging from sites of conscience and museums to individuals — are able to join together to tell our collective stories. We will tell the stories of our fallen American heroes listed at the National Japanese American Memorial, while connecting them back to the 10 American concentration camps to amplify what our mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts and grandparents endured.”
A $454,790 grant from the Japanese American Confinement Sites program of the NPS will enable Heart Mountain to begin work on the restoration of the surviving buildings of the camp’s hospital complex. Eighty years of harsh Wyoming weather have caused the wooden buildings to deteriorate, and the grant funds will allow HMWF to start the long process of restoring the buildings and converting them into exhibit spaces.
“The hospital complex with its red brick smokestack is the most iconic feature of our historic site and contains some of our community’s most human stories — from the babies who were born there and the mothers who gave birth there, to the people who received care there and the people who died there,” Executive Director Aura Sunada Newlin said. “We are honored to be a custodian of these stories, and we hope that the preservation work enabled by this grant will spur the transfer of the hospital property from the federal government to the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation.”
JACSC members urged Congress to push the NPS to release the delayed notices of funding opportunity needed for organizations to apply for the grants. HMWF thanks the three members of the Wyoming delegation — Sens. John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis and Rep. Harriet Hageman — for their support on all its projects.