Pumpkin Cream Cheese Bread w/ Brown Butter Icing & Heart Mountain’s WWII Root Cellars

At its peak in January 1943, Heart Mountain Relocation Site was the third largest city in Wyoming with 10,767 evacuees. Issei and Nisei ran their community like any other in the United States, with councilmen and block managers. Internees worked in the hospital, sawmill, a garment factory, the cabinet shop, on the farm, and in the silk screen shop. Wages were set between $12 and $19 a month. Junior enlisted men in the military earned $21 a month; and the WRA didn’t feel an internee should earn more than this. Internees also worked off the camp in nearby farms, and on projects such as finishing the Bureau of Reclamation’s Heart Mountain Canal. The stark difference was forced incarceration behind barbed wire. (11)

• 

• 

Internees lived within a 30-block section. Twenty-blocks were designated as residential housing and an additional 10-blocks served as open spaces, a cemetery, and garden plots. Each residential block housed 24 barracks, each measuring 120 feet long by 20 feet wide. Inside each barrack, 6 rooms were arranged as apartments ranged from 16 feet long to 24 feet long. Larger families, with up to 6 members, shared a space measuring 24 feet long by 20 feet wide. An internees’ address read as block #-barrack #-apartment #, such as 15-1-C. Similar in design to Heart Mountain, the National Park Service provides a good visual of what a barrack block looked like in California’s Manzanar National Historic Site.

Each block had its own laundry room, separate toilets for men and women, a recreation hall and mess hall. The food served in the forty mess halls didn’t always meet the dietary needs of the internees, including items like canned peaches and white rice. A bakery provided up to 2,000 pounds of bread daily. Milk was delivered from a dairy in nearby Powell. Subsequently the camp’s vegetable, cattle, hog and chicken farm operations helped supplement the bland diet. (12)

• 

• 

• 

To improve their meager apartments, families initially scavenged packing crates for lumber to fashion into furniture and shelving. Sheets were hung to provide privacy. It’s hard to imagine how a newly-wed couple felt living with their in-laws or being woken up by a newborn baby in such close quarters!

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Home improvement items, like tools, seeds and decorative pieces, were not found in the camp canteen store; and were purchased through mail order catalogs like Sears and Wards. Family gardens were eventually planted outside the barracks with flowers and additional vegetables.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

The first winter in camp (1942-1943) proved especially hard on internees. They arrived with what clothes and personal items they could carry. Since the majority of Issei and Nisei were from milder California climates, they were ill-equipped and clothed to combat the harsh Wyoming winters. The recorded low temperature on January 18, 1943 was -28 degrees F. That winter internees learned to ice-skate, an activity most had never done before.

• 

• 

• 

Despite the contemptible circumstances, everyday life continued underneath the watch towers’ gaze. While their parents worked on or off camp, school-age children began attending classes in October 1942 in make-shift barrack classrooms, taught by Caucasian teachers. Japanese-American teachers also gave instruction, but the wages differed significantly. The wages a Caucasian teacher earned was as high as $2,600 annually, but Japanese-American teachers were only paid $228 a year.

Approximately 1,500 students in grades 8-12 bustled inside Heart Mountain High School’s halls. Completed on May 27, 1943, students went to classes like any other high school student, such as math and home economics. They played sports on teams like the Heart Mountain Eagles football team, competing against nearby rivals like the Powell Panthers and Cody Broncs. Students went to dances and graduated from high school with honors.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Nisei youth also participated in club organizations like the Y, Campfire Girls and Boy Scouts. (13) For a nickel or a dime, incarcerees watched movies like Citizen Kane at one of two movie theaters, the Dawn and the Pagoda. In the summer months, the local swimming hole was a favorite hangout spot. Playing sports on softball or baseball teams like the Zebras, ice skating, ping-pong, judo, and boxing were just a few of the activities helping pass the time.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Camp entertainment, beyond these traditional festivities, was found in more creative ways. In October 1943, readers of the camp newspaper, the Heart Mountain Sentinel, were kept informed about the fly-swatting drive started at the beginning of the month. For every 100 dead flies brought in, a ten-cent war stamp was awarded to the fly-swatter.

But like any contest, this “feverish fly-swatting orgy” wasn’t without controversy. In the first week, Mas Tachibana constructed a wood and wire screen trap, netting a total of 40,000 flies and $40 worth of defense stamps. Traditional fly swatters only brought in dead insects in bunches of two to three hundred at a time; thus causing the flying fuss. Ben Nobori, the drive’s chairman, however said, “a dead fly was a dead fly, no matter how captured, and that flies from the hog pen area would eventually find their way into the center.” When the flying insect massacre ended, a grand total of 104,300 flies were eliminated. The final tallies are below:

Internees weren’t always confined to the camp grounds, but processes were in place to make leaving camp extremely difficult. Beginning in 1943, incarcerees could apply for indefinite leave to places in the West Coast military zones. Permission was granted by the Western Defense command to enter and visit these areas; and only to internees who provided sufficient evidence for traveling there.

Eventually restrictions on leave from the camp loosened. Loyalty surveys were given to all internees. Those deemed as loyal to the United States were given the option to move to the mid-west United States to work or attend college. Exorbitant amounts of paperwork was required in order to do so. The majority of Heart Mountain’s 95.9% “loyal” internees opted to stay in camp. However, internees were still required to show passes to exit camp to shop or sight-see in the community, travel to other internment camps, or visit non-Japanese family members (from inter-racial marriages and adoptions).

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

However, not all Nisei felt an obligation to serve the United States. A group called the Fair Play Committee resisted the draft. The grounds for their resistance was having their civil rights violated for being drafted and incarcerated at the same time. All told, 85 men were convicted and imprisoned for this. Sixty-three of these convicted men were from Heart Mountain internment camp. They were tried in Wyoming’s capital Cheyenne in the largest mass trial in Wyoming history. The draft resistance movement at Heart Mountain is explained in greater depth here and here.

Overall, children played. Holidays were celebrated. Life and death occurred. An indomitable spirit endured.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

“…in the early days of the camp, when kids figured it safer to travel in packs and be aligned with some gang. Individually most kids are harmless. But when they band together, they take on a blustering boldness. …kids went around in packs, bullying beating up people, stealing, molesting girls. They kicked holes in the celotex walls, marked up buildings. The school windows were favorite targets for rocks.”

“Juvenile Delinquency No Longer Center Problem” Heart Mountain Sentinel, November 13, 1943 Page 1

John Kitasako goes on to say that the “roots of delinquency are imbedded in the home.” But surmises his article by stating: