Introduction and History

A single barrack remains at the site of the Heart Mountain Relocation Center

The official story of Heart Mountain Relocation Center began in 1942 shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 in February which ultimately led to the creation of 10 internment camps dispersed all around the country. As many as 120,000 Japanese Americans were detained in the camps from 1942 to 1945. Heart Mountain Relocation Center saw around 14,000 of those incarcerees, and the plains around the peak soon turned into Wyoming’s third largest community. The camp was not a formally incorporated city, but it had all the basic civil systems that any modern city would require, including a hospital, fire, police, and judicial systems, three schools, a post office, and a newspaper. People living at Heart Mountain even developed their own agricultural system to improve their limited food supply. Over 500 babies were born at the camp, and 180 people died.

Heart Mountain Relocation Center shut down in November of 1945. Those remaining at the camp when it closed were given a train ticket and $25 to start their new lives. Many former incarcerees were able to get their lives back on track; however, others never fully recovered. In 1976, President Gerald Ford rescinded Executive Order 9066, and in 1980 President Jimmy Carter created the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians to investigate the effects of Executive Order 9066. The Commission reported in 1982 that the incarceration of Japanese Americans could not be justified by military necessity, as the Executive Order had claimed. Instead, the Commission found that the incarceration was motivated by “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.”

The official history of Heart Mountain began in 1942 and ended in 1945. However, the unofficial story of Heart Mountain was already being told long before the war even began. Asian Americans had long experienced prejudice and disdain as a result of racially-motivated fear, especially on the West Coast. Japanese Americans had already been investigated as a possible threat to national security multiple times in the 1930s and 1940s. The investigations all concluded that no threat existed, but were ignored by Executive Order 9066. Over two-thirds of those detained nationwide were American citizens, and many of the rest had been living in the United States for decades. Today, we remember and preserve Heart Mountain as a dark reminder from our own past when extreme circumstances were used as an excuse to mistreat a large number of people who had already been facing discrimination. We remember and preserve Heart Mountain so we can be held accountable for our collective mistake and ensure it is never repeated.

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