Heart Mountain Site
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Heart Mountain press releases provide updates on upcoming events, new exhibits, and news from the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation and Interpretive Center; for high-resolution archival and contemporary images, visit the Media Kit or contact info@heartmountain.org, and for news from the Japanese American Confinement Sites Consortium (JACSC), click here—recent and past press releases are available below.
November 3, 2023
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation opposes a House amendment that would remove funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities. Since the beginning of 2020, Heart Mountain has received more than $660,000 in NEH funding, which helped us keep our interpretive center open during the COVID-19 pandemic and brought more than 220 educators to our site […]
October 30, 2023
Shirley Ann Higuchi, the Chair of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, will be honored as a leader in the Japanese American legal community by the Asian American Legal Defense Education Fund (AALDEF). She will join former Heart Mountain incarceree Judge Raymond Uno, current White House Asian American liaison Erika Moritsugu, and former Equal Employment Opportunities […]
August 9, 2023
A series of literary articles and poetry published by first-generation Japanese immigrants incarcerated at Heart Mountain during World War II has been awarded the best website prize by the Wyoming Historical Society. Known as the Heart Mountain Bungei, the literary journal was published in Japanese in Heart Mountain during World War II. The Bungei articles […]
August 9, 2023
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation recognized the contributions made by its longtime Vice Chair Douglas Nelson during its annual pilgrimage last weekend by presenting him with a lifetime achievement award. The Douglas W. Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award acknowledges Nelson’s more than 50 years of commitment to telling the story of the Japanese American incarceration during […]
July 26, 2023
Three Japanese Americans who help build the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation will receive the organization’s first lifetime achievement awards during its annual Pilgrimage that starts Thursday, July 27, and runs through Saturday, July 29. Jeanette Misaka, Bacon Sakatani, and Raymond Uno will receive the first awards in acknowledgement of their contributions to the creation of […]
July 26, 2023
For too long, Asian Americans have been used as a wedge between the nation’s White majority and other peoples of color, and that was unfortunately true again in the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down affirmative action for Black and Hispanic/Latino college admissions. Starting in the 1960s, the myth that Japanese Americans were a “Model […]
July 26, 2023
When Executive Order 9066 forced Japanese Americans living in the Los Angeles neighborhood known as J-Flats from their homes and into incarceration camps, their African American neighbors came to their aid. The family of Rufus and Crystal Marshall stored their neighbors’ belongings, protected their homes and brought them food during their incarceration at the Pomona […]
July 26, 2023
For the first time, the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation will open to the public a session of its workshops for teachers from around the country for a presentation on the mistreatment of German American war resisters in Montana during World War I. Dr. Keith Edgerton, a recently retired historian at Montana State University-Billings, will speak […]
June 1, 2023
The Mineta-Simpson Institute at Heart Mountain has taken another step closer to completion with the awarding of a $149,646 grant from the National Park Service to help fund an exhibit dedicated to the lives and careers of Secretary Norman Mineta and Senator Alan Simpson. The grant, announced Wednesday, comes from the Japanese American Confinement Sites program, […]
April 20, 2023
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation has published a Japanese-language edition of Setsuko’s Secret: Heart Mountain and the Legacy of the Japanese American Incarceration by Shirley Ann Higuchi, the chair of the foundation’s board. The new edition is a joint project of HMWF and a group of Japanese scientists who studied in the United States under Dr. William […]
April 20, 2023
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation is releasing a new digital exhibit featuring English translations of poems, essays and short stories written in Japanese by first-generation immigrants incarcerated at Heart Mountain during World War II. Called the Heart Mountain Bungei, the poems were published in Japanese and distributed primarily to the Japanese-speaking residents who lived in the […]
March 20, 2023
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation is pleased to announce the appointment of Aura Sunada Newlin as its permanent executive director, which culminates a months-long, nationwide search. She is a fourth-generation Wyomingite, fourth-generation Japanese American, graduate of the University of Wyoming and former anthropology professor at Northwest College in Powell. She was the longtime Heart Mountain […]
