Main Street, Wyoming Classics; 102; Heart Mountain

Often we try to erase the unhappy chapters of our history from the books and memory that will ever happen with the hard relocation center where Japanese-Americans were interned during World War II. The mountain is always there to remind us. In 1984 Deborah Hammon's tracked down residents of the camp to describe what their life was like in those days. In a way it was a little community like so many others in Wyoming hunkering down together in a tough remote environment. A sad chapter in the country's history but rather than hide what happened. A group of locals and memorialized hard matter in the lives of its residents. What's not said at all is that out of Deborah's show a new sense of community for among some of the folks you interviewed. Descendants of Captain tourney's got to know some of the folks who lived there with their parents. The long streets of Main Street Wyoming linked generations. In the summer of 1942 the first train load of hard mountain relocation center in

tourney's arrived in Wyoming each day between 500 to 1000 more arrived in town. Heart mountains population passed 10000 making at Wyoming's third largest city. I'm Deborah Hammons. And today our program returns to Heart Mountain to look at some of the lives touched by the relocation center and to see how those lives may teach us to live with the past. I was 19 I had just turned 19 in April of 43 and I came up here in July with the first train load of volunteers to get the camp ready. Over 110000 people of Japanese ancestry were evacuated from the West Coast and sent to 10 relocation centers put intrigued me was the winner. I had never seen snow before never seen temperature where ice would freeze so it was a different transition. But I was 18 and then 19 of course when I came here it is the first time that I've ever

been in a community where everybody was Japanese-American. And so being a teenager and made for a great social life and I never really was concerned about any of the constitutional issues until I was into my 40s. Paul was a student at Pasadena junior college when he and his family were interned. My dad and my mom my dad was around 60 came with six of their nine children. One my oldest brother was in the Army already he'd been drafted well before Pearl Harbor and another brother was at UC Berkeley and he had gone to the east coast for education. So there were six of us with my father. And we found we lived in one third of our barracks for our family is quite primitive. There was a mess hall for communal dining and there was a communal bathroom of course. But I was young in

18 or 19. So all of this was very exciting to me when I came here. After a while we were permitted to go out on job furloughs but it worked in the sugar fields here. And even though I was young and healthy I would not recommend topping sugar beets for anyone unless they really wanted to work. But I did work in the camp. I was in Messala. Worked on the fire department for a while and I also worked as a swamper unloading coal from cars. And down here at the base of the camp and it would take them up into the camp and dump the coal in each block. And the residents would come out with their buckets and take them into the barracks do like their pot bellied stoves. We all had cots army cots that we slept on and we partitioned off and the the barracks and with whatever we could find. So it was rather primitive

but then I grew up in a small community a rural community in the San Gabriel Valley in California and the town was very much similar to Powell or Cody as it is today. So it's kind of reminds me of when I was growing up. What was interesting is that community life was replicated in camp. We had our base hospital we had schools we are churches. We had social groups for the older for the adults as well as the younger persons. And there were those even a Boy Scout troop as I recall. And a lot of sports were young people. And in the wintertime they would. The fire department our fire department would fill a shallow depression near a block or two as I recall there were 30 blocks and that would become an ice skating rink. And that's when I first had my first chance at ice skating with skates I bought from a Sears catalog. Our wages were fairly

modest in those days. I remember working for nine dollars a month but that included room board. You must understand the doctors were getting $19 a month and other professionals fell in between. There were a lot of social clubs and Girls Clubs. Boys are more like gangs but not bad gangs who just hang out and there were dances. I believe every Friday night or something. And there was even a teenage dance band musicians young young men who formed a dance band and so there was a lot of social life. Paul soon as she returned for the first time to Hart Mountain in June of 1992 I was surprised that it really hadn't changed except that the camp was no longer here. The topography is the same. The country is the same. It seems

to me that I know that the boiler room behind us where the power generated and to my left is a hospital where my wife worked as a nurse's aide although I did not meet her until we met in New York City when I was in the army. Heart Mountain contributed more than 900 men to the U.S. Army. Six hundred and fifty four of them were inducted directly from the center when the Selective Service draft was reinstituted for Japanese-Americans in 1944 20 hard mountain soldiers were killed in action at the time of Pearl Harbor I was born in the draft and immediately thereafter we were reclassified. I was classified as an enemy alien although as a citizen and after were in camps and the government realized I believed that they needed us as translators and interpreters in the Pacific War. So they reclassified us and I was glad to serve because all my peers were in the Army and I wanted to be in the Army and I

was 18 19 and I was not concerned about constitutional issues. As a teenager I was the last of four brothers to serve to go into the service and I wound up with the army of occupation in Japan. Two of my brothers served in the South Pacific under fire. One of them was in Okinawa and received the medal for going into caves and talking Japanese soldiers into surrendering all three of my other brothers served at the war crimes trials in Manila. But I was with the occupation in Tokyo. On January 2nd 1945. The west coast of the United States was once again opened to Japanese American citizens and their parents who had been interned. Departures from heart mountain began slowly but by that summer increased dramatically. No crops were planted and the schools did not open that for. The last

205 evacuees left by special train on Nov. 10 1945. You hear you a young man who had been an attorney at heart mountain chose to remain in Wyoming. This is his story. My husband and I attended a program at the University of Wyoming and a couple from Ralston in Wyoming were talking about what they're doing for Heart Mountain and a question came up. Did anyone stay in the area. And the response was There was one man who went to whirlin to farm and it was such an emotional thing for me because that was my father. You know I was just kind of a passing interesting thing to the audience but that was my daddy. BB Do you remember when you first learned about your father having been at Heart Mountain. I remember very vividly the story was centered around my grandmother. I was probably 11 or 12 years old and we had asparagus that grew wild on the farm which I didn't realize was such a delicacy when I was growing up my grandmother and I were cleaning

asparagus and she had this old beat up Collender a metal colander. It was bent and she started to cry as we would clean the asparagus. And my grandmother was a very strong willed woman. She was educated in Japan and I had never seen her cry and it upset me and I could hear and I could understand in her broken English that she was talking about carrying this Collender all the way with her from California and I knew that she was from California or had lived in California and my dad was born there but I really didn't know the details between. The California life and current life and the fact that she was crying upset me so I asked my mother afterward why was grandmother. Why was grandma so upset. So she sat me down and explain the whole situation with the relocation which was totally. New to me. I had no idea that this is what my father and my grandparents had endured. My father was the eldest of three children and my grandparents were both alive. My father was probably 17 or 18 years old. He

was a student at Pasadena junior college majoring in engineering. And. They again the only information that I have about the the relocation comes from articles that people would write about my father. Law students would come up from the university why am I an interview him. And then the newspaper had an article about him and that was really the only way that I got his viewpoint of what happened. And according to one of the stories he mentioned that in 1942 when he was a student in college the relocation occurred they sold their home. They were farmers in Los Angeles. They sold her home all her possessions and a lot all the furniture for $300. And then they could bring with them only the story that I had heard from my mother only what they could carry. And my father's quote was 40 pounds apiece. So to think that that Collender was one item that my grandmother chose to bring with her was was kind of remarkable. Of any possessions that

that I have that belonged to my my father's side the family I have on display in my home because I know that they journeyed with my parents first or from my grandparents first from Los Angeles to a temporary housing area while they were building the war camps. And I know that my father's family had gone to a racetrack. And dad did mention once having to live in a horse stall. That was not cleaned up for a temporary duration of time before they were trained to Wyoming. I do know that my grandfather who was a successful farmer in Los Angeles I'm assuming he was successful became or headed up all of the farming in at heart mountain. And then after a certain period of time some of the the young people were allowed to work. Outside of the camp. They had work releases. And my father was one who wanted to

who wanted to get away from the camp and went up to Montana after some of the farms the sugar beet farms and I have pictures of that and worked up in the farms in Montana. And that's how he met my mother. Again my mother's family was the only Japanese family in Billings Montana and they had a restaurant and my three uncles and my mother and my grandfather and grandmother ran the restaurant. And then Dad befriended my uncles and started working at the restaurant and then later on married mom they had a double wedding in fact my uncle. My mom my maternal uncle the eldest and my mom they had a double wedding and they both married my uncle and my mother both married people from the from White Mountain. When when Mom and Dad got married mom would tell a story that they had a create a radio and a screwdriver. And those were their possessions that's what they started with. And when my mom of course married Dad she married a family of three because the

traditional Japanese family functions in that the oldest son is responsible for the parents. What happened to the other members of his family after they left heart mountain. My uncle my father was the eldest and then my uncle was next and my aunt he had in had enlisted in the Navy as soon as the war broke out. And so he did not. Go through the relocation with my grandparents and my my father. I have pictures of him. I'm sure coming back to visit his parents which was kind of ironic him being a member of the U.S. Army and Navy and coming back to work and to visit his parents. My aunt graduated from heart Mountain High School. And. Married a young man from power Wyoming one of the the Cojuangco brothers they were I think 13 children in that family and moved to Chicago and lived there until she passed away this last year.

What role did your father play in the state's agricultural community. Again my father was very progressive. I was the first farmer to bring the sprinkler systems into the Big Horn Basin and that sprinkler system in fact still exists and is still on the farm. And then he was also the first farmer to bring tandem trucks. I remember that was a big deal because we had sugar beets and we always had those little dump trucks with small dump trucks while dad was again researching and finding out what was new and what was different what was happening in other agricultural areas. It was the first farmer to have a tandem track and in Ireland and he was also very instrumental in getting more barley as a cash crop into the Big Horn basin when he started the only cash crop was really sugar beets and they needed to diversify and he was instrumental in getting the Coors and Anheuser-Busch companies to look at look at whirlin as a potential area. I mean he served on the Board of Agriculture

and took that very seriously had a heart attack at the time he was on the board and I remember him being half conscious in the hospital talking about the milk water that he couldn't he couldn't just leave that he was a very responsible man and he just couldn't leave that milk order. It was unfinished business that kind of thing and I remember him mentioning that he was also on the state s.c.s board appointed by Governor by President Carter traveled a great deal with that job and again was very progressive had a I think a very. Positive. Input into how agriculture has progressed in the Big Horn basin. What have you learned from your father. The story I have to tell about my dad and his work ethic is how he taught me the value of work which is a real interesting story. He was not he was a very quiet man. He was not the kind of man that had to scream or yell to get his point across is very subtle. And I

was baling hay when I was probably a teen and we went out in the pickup to get out to the field and he was in another. He was on a tractor picking up Bales. So he left me and told me to bill up to a certain point because then the hay was too too much too moist. So I got to that point and I stopped and I popped off the tractor and went to the pickup and turned on the radio and I was just sitting there like a team would listen to the radio. Pretty soon he came by and. Didn't say anything to me. Got out and got a shovel from the back of the pickup handed it to me and he called me Bob I was always the son of the family and he said Bob dig a hole right here. So I said OK. So I dug this hole and when I was finished I. Put the shovel away and got back in the pickup and turn on the radio. Pretty soon dad came by again and he got the shovel out of the back of his truck and he said OK Bob now fill it up. And I said. Oh I get it. We don't sit around on a fire.

If I cannot find something to do my father will find work for me to do. And I thought that that stuck with me for ever. That work you you work and you look for work. The legacy of high mountain remains with us today. And some of the citizens who live near there have chosen to do something about it. Mr. Blackburn How long have you lived here beside hart now. Well from the beginning we came here in 1947 and lived on a homestead three miles west of where the camp was. What did it look like when you first got here. The camp was there and pretty much intact all of the buildings that had been used. I wouldn't say all of the buildings were there but there hadn't been very many removed. When we arrived here. Did you use

building materials from the relocation center each homesteader received to barracks for a dollar to use just a dollar apiece to use for their buildings on their homesteads. You had to remove them from the camp and clean up the area that they were in. So I would say that most of the buildings that were in the camp were gone in five years. In 1978 you started to help build the memorial. About 1975 was certainly first when I first talked about it. We saw people coming back and we would visit with them and there wasn't anything much there. So we decided that we would like to do something. To. Help them to know who are they were they had lived.

It was you don't do these things in a hurry. It was in 1978 before we got the memorial all set up had it dedicated in July of 1978. Well did you have help was this a community effort the way it is. But there were some heavy work to be done. So they asked them to get involved in that. And so that's the way we got the rocks moved them out and moved them in. And the area is being constructed if you want to put it that way the work was all done by the homesteaders who are all world war two veterans. And their wives. It's an entirely volunteer project. Well it started with. Preparing for the war Centennial. I was on a local Centennial Committee. And we were looking for a lasting legacy project. And the idea of doing something with relocation camp came up.

And it just grew from that are really trying to come up with something that could be done that would be a lasting legacy that would be here 400 years from now I mean something. What interested you personally the most about the center. Well the fact that there seems to be very little education all the way down through the school systems as to what people are trained are taught. As to what really happened and even the adults in the local area a lot of people don't really know what happened and why it happened. Basically I got involved to help facilitate others to come to the table and talk about the future of the center. I just simply didn't want to see the center kind of fall into disrepair or to fall into the lapse of memory by people. And I really felt as though that it there was a very very important story to be told and was willing to facilitate people to come to the table and talk about it. The Wyoming Community Foundation was given and then went to work with museums and historic sites across Wyoming and the Hart Mountain project was brought up at a had a board meeting and the director of the Community Foundation said well I've just engaged

the services of historian museum specialist. Would you like to talk to him so. Particularly through Dave Rietz and John Collins. We started talking and then we started putting people together and they were interested. My background was to be able to take a hard historical look at an event and to put it into some kind of context of presentation how are we going to deal with it and how we can explain it to the public. I think anytime you present anything you've got to make some commitments and determinations that you know first and foremost it has to be as accurate as you can make it and it has to be as honest as you can make it and it also has to be as broad so that you can given all sides of the story. And it's very fortunate that we have people alive today that experience both sides of of of a historical event. And so you have to pull all those stories together to try to paint some kind of picture on this broad canvas of change over time in history. I believe that history gets interpreted in each generation and

probably we're learning more all along about what happened at that particular center and I think that's good. I believe that's why we need to continue to collect oral history. We need to continue to pull together materials and artifacts that relate to the history of that center for example the rocks that were just recently donated to the Japanese American national museum. Bring another whole perspective. A lot of people have never talked about in the past. And I just think that it's I think history will continue to reveal itself. I think that's the way it does. And I think we need to be good stewards of it. It's impossible for somebody my age to understand the feelings. Of the people that were in a war and World War II. So we look at things differently and can maybe you look a little more objectively on some things but less sex with less experience on other things too. So I'm sure we look at it differently. But the feelings are still pretty raw about Heart Mountain. How do you bring people together.

Well I think. You have to. Think of them as people and that they were actively involved in a historical event and understand and realize that that is in effect that each one of them differently. And listen to to what they have to say. I mean you have five Japanese people five people in. Powell. They're all affected differently. And we need to listen to all those voices so that we can understand what happened in all its fullness in all its complexity. So it's a willingness to share and listen first. I think what I've learned is that it does take a lot of time for people to be willing to really open up and start really seeing how they feel. It just doesn't happen automatically. Sometimes you need those the years between an event before people really can start to reconcile and come to grips with it. Well why do you think something like this should be saved. It was a historic place.

It was a historic thing to happen here because it's one of the worst things that the government ever did. The people. Those people were all. Incarcerated. They were never charged with everything. They were never convicted of anything. They were never tried for any offense but they were penned up for three years. That could happen so easily. We saw similarities in the Midwest in Chicago during the Gulf War. Of racist comments that. Were tending along the same lines. And people need to learn their history from what happened. Well I think when you marry and have children your views may change and you begin to understand why it is that other people have different values. And I think that if you grew up in this country you cannot be unaware of the

fact that ethnicity matters and that race matters but that in our kind of society where our children and yours are marrying people of other races we must come together and learn how to live together make it work here because you can't work here in our mountain. It can't work anywhere. I would love to see you come back five years ten years from now the dedication of our facility for educational purposes for the children of Wyoming as well as mine because that's where the future of our country lives. I believe this drive down the road the wheels of sing a song about the little town streets extremely low clouds piled up like golden rule. This guy is white as the Beagle grew on. Did a little bit narrow me

down there. I mean you're the same last chance. Baggy clothes. We use one. Well you got your feet down Main Street.