The Setsuko Saito Higuchi Walking Tour

    The Heart Mountain, Wyoming Foundation welcomes visitors to the Setsuko Saito Higuchi Walking Tour, a self-guiding tour of the site of the Heart Mountain Relocation Center that is accessible year-round.  The tour is a paved loop that starts and ends at the site of the reconstructed Honor Roll.  Kiosks at eight stations interpret various points of significance, helping the visitor imagine how the open farmland before them was once the site of Wyoming's third-largest city -- albeit a city surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers.

   The Walking Tour was built and dedicated in memory of the late Setsuko Saito Higuchi, a Heart Mountain internee and member of both the HMWF's Board of Directors and Advisory Board, whose vision and commitment inspired all who knew and worked with her.  The photograph at right shows the ceremonial opening of the Walking Tour on June 24, 2005.  Pictured, left to right, are former U.S. Senator Alan Simpson; HMWF President Dave Reetz; Setsuko Higuchi's daughter and HMWF Board Member Shirley Higuchi; Setsuko Higuchi's grandson Bill Collier; then-Secretary of Transportation and former Heart Mountain internee Norman Mineta; and journalist William Hosokawa, former internee and editor of the Heart Mountain Sentinel, the camp's newspaper.

    The Walking Tour is open year-round, and is accessible to visitors with disabilities.  But we recognize that not everyone will be able to make the trip to the site ... so we offer the following Virtual Walking Tour for you to peruse.

 

The Walking Tour begins just off the parking lot adjacent to the restored Honor Roll and Flagpole.  A large introductory kiosk, visible here from behind, to the left of the white automobile, orients the visitor to the Walking Tour and its eight stations.

The introductory kiosk presents a map of the entire Walking Tour.

Text of Introductory Kiosk     Rooted in decades of anti-Japanese and anti-Asian prejudice, the internment of 120,000 Nisei, American citizens of Japanese descent, and Issei, Japanese resident aliens, was triggered by the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.     Initiatives and legislation during the previous forty years had restricted or prohibited Japanese immigration, land ownership and U.S. naturalization. Still nearly 127,000 Japanese Americans were living in the United States mostly in California, Oregon and Washington. Immediately after the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan, a mandatory curfew was imposed, first on Japanese aliens and then on Japanese American citizens and all were required to carry identification. On February 19, 1942 President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 ordering the exclusion of all persons of Japanese descent, alien or citizen within designated areas of Washington, Oregon, California and Arizona for reasons of military necessity.     Persons of Japanese American descent were instructed to report to assigned assembly centers, until internment camps could be built. They were given only a few days to secure or dispose of their land, houses and possessions. They were allowed to take 100 pounds per person or what they could carry.     There were sixteen assembly centers, ten Justice Department camps, six citizen isolation centers and ten internment camps. The internment camps were located in the states of Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, California, Idaho and Arkansas and operated from 1942-1946.     The Heart Mountain Relocation Center opened in 1942 and closed in November 1945 and all persons were removed, given twenty-five dollars and a rail pass to the destination of their choice. Former internees suffered great hardships during the years after World War II. The former internees often met with hostility, acute housing shortages, loss of jobs and businesses and were forced to start life anew. Recovery came slowly.     The Commission On Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians concluded the exclusion, expulsion and incarceration of Japanese Americans in World War II was not justified by military necessity, as the government had claimed, and the decision was based on:  Race prejudice, War hysteria, Failure of political leadership.     The internment of Japanese Americans is unique to the period of World War II; however, it is of disturbing relevance today when groups of people continue to be singled out. *          *          *     The walking tour is on land owned by the United States Department of Interior and operated by the United States Bureau of Reclamation. The walking tour is made possible by the Heart Mountain, Wyoming Foundation through private donations.     The Heart Mountain, Wyoming Foundation is established to memorialize and educate the public about the significance of the historical events surrounding the internment of Japanese Americans during WW II, and especially the experiences of Japanese Americans who were interned at the Heart Mountain War Relocation Center near Heart Mountain, Wyoming.     The walking tour presents a partial picture of the events that took place in the War Relocation Center at Heart Mountain, Wyoming. The trail is approximately 1000 feet in length and is situated in the area of the relocation center that originally housed the Administration buildings. The estimated time for viewing is approximately 30 minutes.     A more detailed description of the internment experience including military service and resistance to the draft can be found in the brochure located at this kiosk.

Text of Station 1     Directly in front of you was the hospital complex. The structures remaining are the boiler house and chimney, two slabs that were warehouse foundations, one building that was the kitchen and dining room, and one building that was the ambulance office, emergency room and surgery room.     The 150-bed hospital complex opened on August 27, 1942 with Dr. Charles Irwin as the Chief Medical Officer. The hospital consisted of 17 wings built from barracks and connected by a long central hallway. Velma Berryman Kessel of Powell, Wyoming, who was a registered nurse at the camp, recalls, “The hallway, which had windows on each side, was not heated so it was like an oven in summer and frigid in winter.” The hospital was self-contained with steam heat, laundry and kitchen facilities. When fully staffed, there were 9 physicians, 11 dentists, 3 optometrists, 10 registered nurses, 49 nurse’s aides, 10 pharmacists and an ambulance service. Doctors staffing the hospital were internees. Nurses were both Caucasian and internees, and nurse’s aides were internees. Internee doctors were paid $19 per month, the same as a U.S. Army private. The Caucasian nurses were paid $150 per month, the internee nurses $16 per month and the aides $12.     The Health Services Section provided dental, clinical, optometric, limited x-ray and laboratory services. Among the illnesses treated in the wards were pneumonia, croup, sore throats, earaches, flu, diarrhea, cancer, cardiac problems, diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure, ulcers and depression. The stress of incarceration added to health problems for the internees. Accidents, resulting in broken bones, cuts and burns, were common. The majority of surgeries were tonsillectomies and appendectomies. Specialty or complicated cases were referred to hospitals in Billings, Montana. The center’s hospital delivered baby formula to mothers by ambulance 24 hours a day. The ambulance drivers answered an average of thirteen emergency calls per day. The outpatient clinic saw about 130 persons per day.     The first of 566 babies born at the center was delivered Sept. 4, 1942, a boy named William Shigeru, the seventh child of Mr. and Mrs. Akiyo Miyatani, formerly of Anaheim, California. Those born at Heart Mountain came into the world as American citizens behind a barbed wire fence erected by their own government.

This is the view from Station 1 of the Walking Tour, looking toward the remaining buildings of the hospital complex and the administrative area.

Text of Station 2     As you look through the site glass, to the left of the intersection of Highway 14A and Road 19 stood the Military Police complex and one of the guard towers. On the right side of Road 19 were the main gate and the train station. The Chicago, Burlington and Quincy tracks that are used today by the Burlington Northern Railroad brought the internees to this station, named Vocation, beginning in August 1942. The U.S. Supreme Court in December of 1944, ruled that continued detention as illegal and the last internees left in November 1945.     The U.S. Army 331st Escort Guard Company, consisting of 124 soldiers and three officers, guarded the relocation center until the end of 1944. Armed Military Police (MP’s) patrolled the outer perimeter of the project and manned eight elevated guard towers located at regular intervals along the perimeter. The towers were equipped with high beam searchlights. A ninth guard tower stood on a ridge northwest of the relocation center. Internees were not permitted outside the relocation center without a written permit. The MPs’ checked all incoming and outgoing persons at the main gate. The first internees arrived by rail on August 11, 1942, and by October the population of Heart Mountain surpassed 10,000. The train ride from California took an average of 4 days and 3 nights. For most of the trip shades were drawn, and no one was allowed to look outside. Armed guards were in every car. The long journey was especially hard on the elderly and handicapped and those with small children. At the Vocation rail station the internees found themselves in a barren and desolate place. Many internees had to walk up the hill to find their new homes, while trucks carried their luggage. Some were heard to say “shikata ga nai” or it can’t be helped.

The Walking Tour offers shelter from the bright Wyoming sun. The remaining buildings of the hospital and administration complexes stand in the background.

Text of Station 3     As you look through the site glass, you will see the only remaining root cellar of the original three. It is on private land and may not be visited. The evacuees cultivated farmland north of the living area, across the highway to the south and southwest as far as the Corbett Bridge over the Shoshone River. Remains of hot beds may be seen below just to the right of this point.     The War Relocation Authority (WRA) budget for food was 45 cents per day per person. However, actual costs were 32 cents per day. The need for an adequate food supply and fresh vegetables were major factors in the internees starting a to grow many of their own crops. More than 1,750 acres of federal land near the Heart Mountain Center was available for farming if the Shoshone Canal could be completed to bring in water from the Shoshone Dam hydroelectric project. The canal, which had been started by the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC), was completed by the internees in time for planting in the spring of 1943.     The Heart Mountain region averages 109 growing days per year, with crop harvest required before early frost in September. The farmers from the Yakima Valley in Washington were especially helpful in teaching methods they had developed for growing crops in a short growing season. Hot caps and hot beds were two methods used to grow plants. Crops raised in quantity were: wheat, barley, celery, corn, peas, radishes, daikon (a giant radish), nappa (a variety of cabbage), potatoes, gobo and melons. Root cellars, built by the internees, were used to store vegetables. Canning of some produce was done by contract with Big Horn Canning in Cowley, Wyoming. In addition to crops, over 1,000 hogs 15,000 chickens were raised and over a million eggs were produced for consumption at Heart Mountain and other WRA camps since no outside sales were permitted. James Ito and Eiichi Sakauye who were experienced large-scale farmers in California, were valuable Internee Assistant Farm Superintendents responsible for these crops.     In 1942 and 1943, many internees volunteered to work on farms in war caused labor-short Wyoming, Montana and Idaho to help save the sugar beet harvest. The internees transformed this section of Wyoming’s Big Horn Basin into productive farmland. Local farmers still say to former internees, “You people showed us what could be done on this land.”     In the brochure at the kiosk you may see a complete list of all crops grown and harvested at Heart Mountain Camp during the year 1943 -1944.

This is the view from Station 3, looking toward the site of the root cellars and beyond to the McCullogh Peaks that hemmed the internees' eastern horizon from 1942 to 1945.

Text of Station 4     As you look through the site glass, you see the camp swimming hole. After an internee Boy Scout drowned while swimming in the canal during the summer of 1943, the Administration ordered a large pit excavated just below the canal. The pit was lined with gravel and filled with water, and it became the Heart Mountain swimming hole.     One of the main problems facing the Heart Mountain administrators was keeping the internees busy. Swimming, a popular summer activity, was supervised by lifeguards and swimming instructors.     During the long winter, ice-skating was a popular sport new to most internees. Youth football, basketball, baseball and softball teams were organized. High school sports teams were allowed to become members of the Wyoming Athletic Association and competed against surrounding schools. Judo, Kendo, sumo wrestling, boxing and girls’ volleyball, basketball and softball teams were also organized. Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and Campfire Girls troops were active, after camp restrictions were eased, they could hike up Heart Mountain, camp on the Shoshone River, and practice outdoor cooking, and crafts. Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson of Cody, Wyoming and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, a former internee, met as Boy Scouts at the Heart Mountain camp when the Cody troop came to visit the internee troop. These two Scouts formed a lifelong friendship and served together in the United States Congress.     The internees also adopted many hobbies including painting, woodcarving, cabinetry, pottery, flower arranging, and needlework. They participated in camp sponsored plays, dances, and traditional arts such as poetry writing, mandolin, and Noh drama. An internee musical group traveled about northern Wyoming to help raise money for war bonds. Two movie theaters, the Dawn and the Pagoda, were established in barracks recreation halls and films were shown on weekends.

Text of Station 5     In front of you stood the Administration Area which consisted of an H shaped Administration building, a small building to the right of the Administration building for the Block Managers Community Council offices, and a building to the south for the newspaper, agriculture, engineering and welfare offices. Caucasian civilian housing was to the left and to the right of where you are now standing and included a separate mess hall and recreation hall.     The civilian War Relocation Authority (WRA) ran the relocations camps. Initially headed by Milton Eisenhower and later by Dillon S. Myer, WRA used the Army as “security.” Policies governing camp life were strictly defined by the WRA and carried out by the Project Directors, C.E. Rachford, and after December 1942, Guy Robertson.     The Heart Mountain staff numbered about 200 persons divided into seven sections. These included: legal service, reports, internal operations, relocation, community management, supply and finance. Except at the top levels, the turnover of Caucasian employees was high.     The internees were allowed a form of self-government that guided many of the important functions of relocation center life.     The Project Directors appointed one person from each block as a Block Manager to handle daily problems with housing, repair, maintenance and the mess hall.     In 1943, the internees established and ratified the Charter of Heart Mountain Relocation Center to establish internal justice and promote the welfare of their community.     The Charter created the position of Councilman, elected by each block for a six-month term to consult with WRA officials about internal problems. The Block Managers were usually Issei—the foreign born generation, while the Councilmen were U.S. citizens whose first language was English. Although living in Wyoming, internees could not vote as citizens in Wyoming. However, they could vote absentee ballots in their hometown elections.

The view from Station 5 toward the Administrative Area.

Text of Station 6     As you look through the site glass, you see a concrete records vault, the only remnant of the high school building that stood on this ground.     In early August 1942, the Heart Mountain project director hired Clifford D. Carter as superintendent and John Corbett as high school principal. Their immediate task was to find teachers. Twenty-six Caucasian teachers and four internees, the latter having been issued Wyoming teaching certificates stamped, “Valid at Heart Mountain only,” were hired. Turnover was high, with Clarissa Corbett the only teacher to remain through the life of the Center.     Classes were conducted in barracks with 6 rooms in each building. Each room contained a coal stove, a single light fixture hanging from the rafters, low wall partitions with open rafters and benches for seating. Initially there were no desks for students, no blackboards and few school supplies. Often 50 textbooks had to suffice for two hundred students. Students located near the stove sat perspiring, while those near the door and windows wore their coats to keep warm. In December 1942, Celotex insulation wallboard for partitioning arrived, but it was evident from the beginning that high school classes could not be successfully conducted in the barracks.     The high school building was completed for 1943-1944 school term. Constructed for the most part by the internees themselves, under the supervision of Bennett & Lewis Contractors of Billings, Montana. Tatsu Hori, an engineer at the Stanford Research Institute prior to his incarceration, designed the school’s heating system. The high school had 39 classrooms, a gymnasium/auditorium, and other office space. It was not until the second year, that the center obtained enough textbooks and school supplies.     Heart Mountain High School had the normal curriculum of other Wyoming schools at the time. The journalism class published a mimeographed school paper, The Heart Mountain Eagle, and school annuals called The Heart Mountain Tempo were edited in the camp and sent out to be printed in 1944 and 1945.     Eventually, five elementary schools were consolidated into two schools, Lincoln and Washington. They were more centrally located within the camp but still in barracks.     Teachers developed curriculums believed to be most beneficial for students who had been stripped of their freedom, which also met the approval of the Wyoming State Board of Education. Not the least of problems was how to teach the tenets of democracy at the same time the students were looking out the window at guard towers and barbed wire fences. Heart Mountain High School graduated 808 students in its three-year existence. The Class of 1943 had 249 graduates, the Class of 1944 had 302 graduates and the Class of 1945 had 250 graduates. Ted Fujioka, the first high school student body president, enlisted in the U.S. Army and was killed in France.

The Walking Tour offers benches for rest and contemplation.

Text of Station 7     You are now overlooking the entire living area of the Heart Mountain Relocation Center. More than 10,000 men, women and children lived in the area bounded on your left by the red brick home in the distance, the hill ahead of you, the hospital on your right and the area where you are now standing. It was the third largest community in Wyoming. A diagram of a typical block and the layout of a barracks are shown. There were 30 blocks.     Relocation center housing was similar to that seen in temporary military camps of the time. Construction began in June 1942 with more than 2,500 workers, many of whom were from nearby communities. The government hired every man who could swing a hammer and the jobs were a huge boost to the regional economy. Thirteen million board feet of #3 grade green pine and spruce lumber arrived by railroad. A single barrack could be constructed in fifty-eight minutes. Quality of construction was of little concern. The barracks housing, mess halls, latrines, administrative and hospital buildings were erected in sixty-two days at a 1942 cost of $5.5 million dollars.     The green lumber shrank when it dried, leaving gaps between the boards of up to one-half inch. The outer walls were covered with black tarpaper and lath. This type of construction created many hardships for the internees during the cold Wyoming winters. Each barracks building was 120 feet long by 20 feet wide. The building was divided into six single rooms, two 20 by24 feet, two 20 by16 feet and two 20 by 20 feet. The larger rooms were for families of six or more individuals. These barracks apartments supplied only basic protection against the elements. There was no individual or family privacy. Each room was furnished with a coal burning pot-bellied stove and a single light fixture hanging from the open ceiling. Coal was dumped in a central location in each block and internees hauled what they needed each day. In addition, each internee was issued an army style cot with mattress and two wool blankets. Partitions for privacy usually consisted of blankets draped across a rope that spanned the room. The internees made furniture from scrap lumber. In late December 1942 and early January 1943, Celotex, a type of insulation wallboard, finally arrived for the internees to install ceilings and walls.     Each block was made up of 24 barracks, two buildings with showers, lavatories, and laundry tubs, two mess halls and two recreation halls. Each block held about 550 persons.     Internees had to leave their apartments to use the latrine and shower facilities and to go to the mess halls for meals. The communal nature of the latrine and shower facilities destroyed any semblance of personal privacy. The communal nature of the mess halls also caused a breakdown in family structure, as children were not required to eat at the same time or at the same table as their parents.     All staple foodstuffs were requisitioned from Army Quartermaster stations and wartime food rationing was observed. Certain foods were more popular than others and the cry, “No more rutabagas,” was often heard.     Within the living area of the relocation center were barracks set aside for Buddhist and Christian worship, schools, and later a community enterprise store, shoe repair shop, barber shop, beauty shop, radio shop, dry cleaners, two movie theaters and a library. Eventually a United Service Organization (USO) lounge was opened to entertain Nisei servicemen visiting their families.     What might appear to have been a “normal community” never was normal because of the surrounding barbed wire, guard towers and lack of personal freedom and privacy for the internees.

Visitors can enjoy a relaxing picnic lunch with a stunning view of Heart Mountain.  Each piece of furniture along the Walking Trail was supported by a donor who wished to remember someone affected by the Heart Mountain Relocation Center.  The close-up photograph is the memorial plaque on the picnic table.  It notes not just the names of those remembered, but also the number assigned the family by the government and the address of the family's barracks unit.

Text of Station 8     As you look through the site glass, you see the hill where the water reservoir stood. Across Highway 14A was the water treatment plant and adjacent to the military police complex was the sewage treatment plant. Directly across the intersection in front of you stood the fire station, Block 21 held the police station, and Block 28 the courthouse. The Heart Mountain Sentinel newspaper office was located in the administration area. At the foot of the hill in front of you was the relocation center cemetery. This station is an excellent vantage point for viewing the entire living area.     Water for domestic use was pumped from the Shoshone River below the camp into a treatment area south of Highway 14A. The water was treated, filtered and then pumped by the “high level pumping plant” into the concrete reservoir on top of the hill then flowed by gravity into the camp. The sewage disposal plant included sludge beds, a pump house, a chlorination house, and a large buried “Imhoff” tank.     The Military Police were responsible for security of the center. However, selected internees served as internal camp police. These “policemen” had the power to take people who were fighting or drunk or possessed weapons to the Military Police barracks.     The courthouse was located in Block 28. The Judicial Commission, a body of between three and seven internees, appointed by the internee-elected Chartered Council, could levy fines up to $300 for disorderly conduct or violation of internal regulations.     Fire was a great hazard because of the flimsy nature of the barracks and the use of coal stoves. The Fire Department organized September 1, 1942, sometimes was called out to fight fires in temperatures as low as thirty degrees below zero.     The water system had been built without expansion joints and occasionally pipes froze solid and cracked. On cold nights, the residents kept stoves burning and volunteers took turns walking a fire watch.     Internee Bill Hosokawa was the founding editor of the weekly center newspaper, The Heart Mountain Sentinel, which was edited in the camp and printed in Cody. The Sentinel carried a mimeographed Japanese language supplement. The first issue came out October 24, 1942. Approximately 6000 copies of the Sentinel were published each week. Many copies were sent to friends and relatives outside the camp. The Sentinel sold at first for 3 cents, but the price was lowered to 2 cents when advertisers, such as mail order stores patronized the paper. The internees published the paper with no interference from the Administration.     Between 1942-1945, 185 persons died at Heart Mountain. Some bodies were sent to Great Falls, Montana, for cremation at a cost of $100; others were buried in the camp cemetery. All but five of the bodies were exhumed and removed to the West Coast after the war. The five unclaimed bodies were moved to the Powell Cemetery.

The Heart Mountain, Wyoming Foundation fondly remembers Sets Higuchi.