The Heart Mountain, Wyoming Foundation plans to build
an Interpretive Learning Center (ILC) on the original relocation camp land in
full view of Heart Mountain. (Click here to
see the project's timeline and budget.) This location will allow us to
invoke the “Power of Place”, enabling visitors to connect with the experience of
the internees. The learning experience is intended to be personal and
intellectually stimulating, challenging, compelling, and reflective.
The ILC will provide an overview of the wartime relocation of Japanese
Americans, including the background history of Asian prejudice in America and
the factors leading to the enforced confinement of West Coast Japanese
Americans. Special emphasis will be given to constitutional issues, civil
liberties and rights, diversity education and training and ethnic understanding.
The Heart Mountain Interpretive Learning Center will also provide links and
virtual connections to other historical sites, research centers, and collections
dealing with related issues.
Historic events specific to the Heart Mountain Relocation
Center will be the central focus of the ILC’s content. Camp life, internee
responses to relocation, debates over military service and the draft, the
relationships between the internees and their Wyoming neighbors, the camp’s
contribution to the area’s agricultural economy, the sacrifices of Heart
Mountain servicemen, and the postwar experience of the internees will all be
brought to life in the Learning Center’s multi-media exhibits.
The Learning Center will also provide visitors with a more intimate connection
to the personal stories of the internees. It will reveal not only the hardships,
injustice, and struggles, but also the inner strength, courage and resilience
that enabled most internees to endure and make the best of a bad situation. A
special area will be devoted to the experiences of children and youth at Heart
Mountain, with exhibits portraying school life, sports, clubs, scouting,
hobbies, and pets. Another resource – an interactive data base – will allow
visitors to access (and add) information about individuals and families who
lived at Heart Mountain. These files will include where individuals resided,
roles they played at Heart Mountain, along with other biographical data on their
lives, before, during and after the war. HMWF believes that this interactive
resource will be especially important for the families whose parents,
grandparents and great grandparents lived the Heart Mountain experience.
The Interpretive Learning Center will have an orientation film designed to introduce visitors to the exhibits. The facility itself will include two re-created barrack living quarters with original furnishings and artifacts from HMWF collections.
Also available will be recordings of oral history interviews with former
internees and Wyoming area residents. Documents and materials available for
on-site research and supervised viewing will include: all editions of the Heart
Mountain Sentinel newspaper; official records relating to the Heart Mountain
internment; hundreds of original photographs, sketches and diaries portraying
education, government and camp life in the center, as well as materials relating
to the 442nd Combat Battalion and the Military Intelligence Service.
The proposed five and a half million dollar building, encompassing almost 11,000 square feet, will be architecturally appropriate. The design and selection of materials have been carefully chosen to best convey the physical and emotional aspects of the internment. The Interpretive Learning Center has been professionally designed, and has relied on extensive internee input and involvement.
In addition to the central visitor Center the site will
include a reconstructed sentry station at the park entrance, as well as a
recreated guard tower in its original location. HMWF has already replicated the
Military Honor Roll on its historic site, and in
2005, completed an eight-station self-guided Walking
Tour that will provide additional learning experiences for visitors.
The Foundation has conceived the Learning Center as a destination for a wide range of visitors from diverse ethnic, age, educational, and interest backgrounds. We believe its location, between the Black Hills and Yellowstone National Park, will make it an important and accessible cultural and historical resource for hundreds of thousands of tourists who traverse that part of Wyoming each year.
The Heart Mountain, Wyoming Foundation is committed to
creating this state-of the-art Learning Center as both a fitting remembrance of
the trials and triumphs of the Japanese Americans unjustly confined there and as
a powerful reminder to all Americans that our historic commitment to equal
justice and individual rights requires constant vigilance.
