Heart Mountain in Wyoming site and Camp Amache in Colorado slated for assistance
We usually think of the National Park Service as being in charge of campsites, not camp sites. As part of its mandate to preserve and protect sites of historical and cultural significance, the NPS’s Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program has awarded $3,895,000 in federal funds to private nonprofit organizations; educational institutions; state, local and tribal governments to preserve and provide interpretation resources to the 10 relocation camps scattered in the West.
Heart Mountain, Wyoming
The largest of this year’s grants — $832,879 — goes to the nonprofit Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation. On a cold, windy day last winter, I visited the Heart Mountain site between Cody and Powell, Wyoming. The experience was moving, shattering and belatedly embarrassing for the way our government treated its own citizens — alas, neither the first nor the last time it has done so. Thanks to an earlier grant and the efforts of local volunteers, the meaningfulness of Heart Mountain is finally gaining traction. A lot of work has been done since my visit, and the new grant will help even more. The center’s motto is “Lessons From The Past – Guidance For The Future.” If only.
A museum and interpretive center being built at the Heart Mountain relocation center site, with more improvements soon to come.
My visit, which I blogged about here, also had a beacon of inspiration in the person a LaDonna Zall, a diminutive retired phys-ed teacher who witnessed internees boarding trains to leave the camp soon after the war. I wish I had asked to take her picture, but fortunately, Bacon Sakatini did on another occasion.
LaDonna Zall with University of North Carolina law professor Eric Muller and former internee James Ito. Bacon Sakatani photo.
Also, if you go the the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation website and watch the ImageLoop slide show in the center of the home page, you can see her, microphone in hand, addressing panelists and audience at “Removal, Resettlement, Reflection: A Community Conference” program presented this past September by UCLA Japanese- American Studies, the Japanese-American National Museum and the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation. I don’t know her age, though she was in her early teens in 1945. For decades, she has been devoted to collecting and curating artifacts from that era, and tireslessly speaking on behalf of the foundation and how the camp site needs to become a commemorative and educational center.
The NPS grant for the completion of the interior and remaining exterior infrastructure for the new 11,000-square-foot Heart Mountain Interpretive Learning Center comes on top of last year’s $292,252 grant to help build a museum and learning center at Heart Mountain. It is to house important historical collections that include every edition of the Heart Mountain Sentinel newspaper, official records related to the camp, hundreds of original photographs, sketches and diaries (many of which LaDonna Zall collected and has been preserving). The grand opening of and “pilrimage” to the new Heart Mountain Intpretive & Learning Center is scheduled for August 19-21, 2012. LaDonna Zall will be biggest presence there — though she would probably never take on that role.
And in Colorado
The Park Service has two grants going to the Granada Relocation Center (aka, Camp Amache ) near Granada, today a hamlet of 600 or so in southeastern Colorado. It was the smallest of the 10 centers with 30 blocks of residential barracks, each with its own mess hall, laundry and shower rooms — set up, much like Heart Mountain and others, much like a military base. Also like Heart Mountain, children at the Colorado camp attended school while their parents and grandparents worked on farms. Click here to see historic photographs.
The Granada Relocation Center, already listed on the National Register of Historic Places and a designated National Historic Landmark, will benefit from three grants, two going to Colorado Preservation, Inc. and one to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. One of the Colorado Preservation grants for $20,093 will be used to survey, identify and inventory the remaining historic buildings from Amache in a 110-mile radius outside the camp. Again like Heart Mountain, camp buildings were sold off after the internees were released. The second for $37,327 will be used to relocate a historic water tower tank to Amache, and develop plans to rehabilitate and reconstruct it at its original location. History has odd twists, doesn’t it? A relocating tank from a relocation center will be re-relocated to the camp site. The final grant goes to the National Trust for Historic Preservation to formulate plans to reconstruct a guard tower at Amache.
Thank you for this important piece. It’s so important to remember the history and especially the travesty inflicted on Japanese Americans during World War II, and right in our own back yard!
I went to Heart Mountain a couple of years ago and have been anxiously awaiting the completion of the visitor center, etc. I had the opportunity to meet (and photograph in very grey weather) LaDonna Zall and was so impressed. I’ve pitched the story several times but no editor has been interested in it. I’m hoping once it’s completed that will change. Heart Mountain evokes feelings not just about the specifics of what happened to the residents who were there but about who we are as human beings–how we relate, how we fear, how we cope, how we are defined by experiences, how we survive, how we forgive if we can.
Glad to hear that the Park Service is commemorating this shameful history. We need to keep it alive.
Another odd twist to the Camp Amache story is that the camp is named after Amache, daughter of Cheyenne Chief One-Eye, aka Lone Bear, aka Ochinee, who was killed at the Sand Creek massacre. I’ve always thought that was so ironic.
It is indeed ironic — and an interesting footnote to the intersection of two tragic episodes in American history.
I’ve known about Heart Mountain for a few years – an author that crossed paths with me was the granddaughter of a Japanese couple that was interned there from Los Angeles. Very moving and what a shock to learn this part of American history.
Thanks for this great post, Claire.
I’m very touched by the efforts of LaDonna Zall. Her story is proof that witnessing something moving, tragic and important can have repercussions into the future. And now that lasting memory from Zall’s childhood can go on to educate others and change *their* lives.
Thank you for bringing this vital grant to our attention, Claire. Provocative and worth reflecting on as we head into 2011.
Thanks Claire for writing about the camps. The stories need to be told and recorded. It has been almost 70 years and is old history.
At least three generations of Americans who were not yet born need to be told so they can understand the great need today to preserve our civil rights.
Thank you for writing such a great article! We really are very lucky to have LaDonna, volunteers, and the rest of the members on the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation Board preserving this part of history for future generations.
Please mark your calendar for the Heart Mountain Interpretive Learning Center Grand Open and Dedication on August 20, 2011. Visit our website at heartmountain.org for more information.
I happy to here that on Japanese Americans during World War II, and right in our own back yard! Thank you
Dear Claire,
Thank you for your kind comments. The Heart Mountain project is a labor of love. I have had the opportunity to meet people around the world who have been stunned at what happened here. Perhaps the ILC will show present and future generations what can happen when fear and prejudice can overcome common sense.
Just a note for correction: I did not speak at the workshop in Los Angeles. I was unable to attend.
I hope that you will be able to attend our Grand Opening.
LaDonna – Your compliment to this post and the earlier one is the greatest praise I could get. I was bouncing around the Internet, finding pictures and information about events that do seem to be picking up steam. I drew the wrong conclusion about your being in L.A. The images I saw were from a different event. Apologies. And I too hope that I can join you at the Grand Opening. No promises, but a good intention on my part.