Heart Mountain Site

A Boy of Heart Mountain by Barbara Bazaldua

At the onset of WWII, nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated in concentration camps. Inspired by Shigeru Yabu’s youthful camp experiences, A Boy of Heart Mountain is a poignant coming-of-age story and a celebration of the human spirit under duress.

Check out the reading guide below.

Stanley Hayami, Nisei Son: His Diary, Letters & Story from an American Concentration Camp to Battlefield, 1942 – 1945 annotated by Joanne Oppenheim

The “whole mess” as Stan put it, began on December 7, 1942, when Japan Attacked the United States Pacific Fleet in Hawaii. Stanley Hayami’s diary serves as witness to a dark time in our history and is told through the eyes of a teenager who will soon be expected to take up the responsibility of a man.

They Called Us Enemy by George Takei, Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott, and Harmony Becker

Actor and activist George Takei of Star Trek fame recounts his childhood experiences in the Rohwer and Tule Lake Relocation Centers in this graphic novel. Takei recalls the terrors and small joys of childhood in the shadow of legalized racism, his mother’s hard choices, his father’s tested faith in democracy, and how those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future.

Check out the reading guide below.

Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, James D. Houston

The true story of one spirited Japanese American family’s attempt to survive the indignities of forced detention and of a native-born American child who discovered what it was like to grow up behind barbed wire in the United States.

Free to Die For their Country by Eric Muller

In the spring of 1942, the federal government forced West Coast Japanese Americans into detainment camps on suspicion of disloyalty. Two years later, the government demanded even more, drafting them into the same military that had been guarding them as subversives. Most of these Americans complied, but Free to Die for Their Country is the first book to tell the powerful story of those who refused. Based on years of research and personal interviews, Eric L. Muller re-creates the emotions and events that followed the arrival of those draft notices, revealing a dark and complex chapter of America’s history.

Letters from the 442 by Minoru Masuda, Hana Masuda and Dianne Bridgman

This is the first collection of letters by a member of the legendary 442nd Combat Team, which served in Italy and France during World War II. Written to his wife by a medic serving with the segregated Japanese American unit, the letters describe a soldier’s daily life.

On the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

A story of a Chinese boy who grows into a man during WWII and how he tried to live by his beliefs after befriending a Japanese American girl. (Fiction)

Displacement by Kiki Hughes

Kiku, a modern-day Japanese American, is visiting her late grandmother’s house in San Francisco when she is suddenly pulled back in time to 1940s California. Faced with the challenges of forced relocation and imprisonment, Kiku not only witnesses how Japanese Americans managed to create community and commit acts of resistance but gains a deeper understanding of her grandmother. (Fiction)
Read more about Displacement in this interview with Kiki Hughes.

We Are Not Free by Traci Chee

Fourteen Japanese American teenagers find their lives turned upside down when they are removed from their homes and forced into incarceration camps. In a world that seems determined to hate them, these young Nisei must rally together as racism and injustice threaten to pull them apart. (Fiction)

Check out the reading guide below.

Colors of Confinement: Rare Kodachrome Photographs of Japanese American Incarceration in World War II edited by Eric L. Muller with photographs by Bill Manbo

In 1942, Bill Manbo (1908 -1992) and his family were forced from their Hollywood home into the Japanese American internment camp at Heart Mountain in Wyoming. While there, Manbo documented both the bleakness and beauty of his surroundings, using Kodachrome film, a technology then just seven years old, to capture community celebrations and to record his family’s struggle to maintain a normal life under the harsh conditions of racial imprisonment. Colors of Confinement showcases sixty-five stunning images from this extremely rare collection of color photographs, presented along with three interpretive essays by leading scholars and a reflective, personal essay by a former Heart Mountain incarceree.

The Eagles of Heart Mountain: A True Story of Football, Incarceration, and Resistance in World War II America by Bradford Pearson

In the fall of 1943, the Heart Mountain high school football team, the Eagles, finished an undefeated season, crushing the competition from nearby, predominantly white high schools. Amid all this excitement, American politics continued to disrupt their lives as the federal government drafted men from the camps for the front lines—including some of the Eagles.

Moving Walls: The Barracks of America’s Concentration Camps by Sharon Yamato, Photographs by Stan Honda

In 1994, a group of volunteers arrived at Heart Mountain to deconstruct and ship two Heart Mountain barracks to the new Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. Yamoto explores the dual identities of the Heart Mountain barracks, used first as housing by incarcerated Japanese Americans at the Heart Mountain confinement center during World War II and subsequently turned into homes and farm buildings for post-war homesteaders in the area.

Setsuko’s Secret: Heart Mountain and the Legacy of the Japanese American Incarceration by Shirley Ann Higuchi

Navigating the complicated terrain of the Japanese American experience, Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation’s board chair Shirley Ann Higuchi patched together her mother Setsuko’s story and came to understand the forces and generational trauma that shaped her own life. Moving seamlessly between family and communal history, Setsuko’s Secret offers a clear window into the “camp life” that was rarely revealed to the children of the incarcerated. This volume powerfully insists that we reckon with the pain in our collective American past.

Check out the reading guide below.