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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.
March 10, 2023
Eighty-one years ago, 120,000 people of Japanese descent were incarcerated without evidence, because opportunistic politicians used their ethnicity to question their loyalty after the Imperial Japanese government’s attack on Pearl Harbor. As much as we want to believe that the arc of the moral universe, while long, eventually bends toward justice, the recent attacks on […]
February 17, 2023
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation has filed a public comment with the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service protesting a near quadrupling of the fee to process and copy the immigration files of Japanese immigrants to the United States in the 20th century, many of whom were incarcerated in Heart Mountain and other camps during World War […]
February 17, 2023
On Saturday, February 18, the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center will open its new exhibit, Parallel Barbed Wire: From Heart Mountain to Dachau, which features the remarkable stories of Heart Mountain incarceree Clarence Matsumura and Holocaust survivor Solly Ganor. Matsumura grew up in Los Angeles, graduated from UCLA and was working in radio before he was […]
December 25, 2022
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation praises Congress for passing the 2023 spending bill that includes the Norman Y. Mineta Japanese American Confinement Education Act and the Japanese American History Network Act, which together will further education about one of the nation’s civil rights abuses. Named after the late Norman Mineta, who was incarcerated at Heart […]
December 20, 2022
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation is now accepting applications from educators from around the country to participate in workshops to learn about the Japanese American incarceration during World War II and share that history with their students. Applications for the workshops — Echoes of History: Mistreatment and Incarceration in the American West — will be […]
December 20, 2022
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation is proud to announce the publication of an updated edition of Douglas Nelson’s Heart Mountain: The History of an American Concentration Camp. Initially published in 1976, Nelson’s book was the first examination of life inside the incarceration site for Japanese Americans at Heart Mountain during World War II. It inspired […]
December 20, 2022
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation appreciates any mention of the Japanese American incarceration as a historic injustice founded on racism, suspicion, and hysteria. However, we strongly condemn the comparison of Tom Barrack, on trial for acting as an unregistered foreign agent, to the late Secretary Norman Mineta and the more than 120,000 people of Japanese […]
December 20, 2022
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation wishes Senator Alan K. Simpson, one of the inspirations for its Mineta-Simpson Institute, a very happy 91st birthday. As part of our celebration of the birthdays of Al and his wife Ann, who turns 91 on October 10, the Foundation is in the midst of a Show Your Love fundraising […]
December 20, 2022
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation has received a grant from the National Endowment of Humanities to conduct workshops for 72 teachers from around the country for the third consecutive year. The workshops will take place in the summer of 2023 and will focus on the unjust treatment of minority groups in the West and the […]
December 20, 2022
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation is proud to announce that its augmented reality tour, designed by Jonathan Amakawa, has won the best activities award from the Wyoming State Historical Society. The award will be presented during the Wyoming State Historical Society’s annual meeting the weekend of September 9, 2022. Jonathan Amakawa, head of STUDIO Amakawa […]
December 20, 2022
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation is conducting a nationwide search for a permanent executive director to lead the organization’s expanding operations and the construction of the new Mineta-Simpson Institute. The executive director will lead the foundation’s staff as it begins construction of the Mineta-Simpson Institute, which is devoted to honoring the lives and careers of […]
November 17, 2022
As an organization devoted to teaching the accurate history of the Japanese American incarceration during World War II, the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation knows that the unjust imprisonment of more than 125,000 people without trial was not simply the result of the Imperial Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Instead, our education programs reflect the reality […]
