Retracing the Painful Past at an Internment Camp
This is why two Japanese-Americans decided to go back to the Wyoming internment camp where they were imprisoned as children.
Redress and Remembrance for Internees Life at Heart Mountain
Ken Kitajima has returned to Heart Mountain — the internment camp where he and other Japanese Americans were forced to live nearly 80 years ago. This time, he’s traveled to rural Wyoming with his grandkids to retrace a painful period in their family history. Kitajima was 12 when the U.S. government forced his family to leave their home in Campbell, California. As a child, Kitajima didn’t understand what was happening — he first saw it as an escape from bullying at school.
During World War II, people of Japanese descent from Oregon, Washington and California were incarcerated at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Park County, Wyo., as the result of an executive order of President Franklin Roosevelt. Residents were at the camp from Aug. 12, 1942 to Nov. 10, 1945, two months after the end of the war with Japan. When the camp was at its largest, it held more than 10,000 people, making it the third largest town in the state. When the people first arrived, a barbed-wire fence to surround the camp was not yet complete. The internees protested the construction of this barrier and caused further work to be delayed. In November 1942, they submitted a petition containing 3,000 signatures to WRA Director Dillon Meyer.
Nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned in these camps during World War II. At the end of 1942, the Kitajima family was transferred to an internment camp in Colorado where they lived until August 1945. Kitajima went on to serve in the U.S. Air Force as a surgical nurse during the Korean War. Despite what was done to his family, Kitajima says he doesn’t hold resentment. But he is sharing what life was like in the camps with his grandkids, so history isn’t forgotten.
Brut.
30 comments
Chuck Z.
01/30/2020 04:03Couldnt hold it against America!! I know they were here on good standing but trust wasnt there hopefully they were treated good
Linda B.
01/29/2020 00:18Japan had bombed our soldiers in Pearl Harbor. This was a preventative act, a necessary precaution.
James R.
01/25/2020 18:22Just maybe, it may have had a little bit of something to do with how the Japanese sucker-punched us at Pearl Harbor... Just like with the Muslim influx today the Japanese were not all bad but who had time to sort them out?
Matthew S.
01/24/2020 20:17Move on Sulu. Everyone else has
Al H.
01/24/2020 15:47National security in war comes first. There were 100’s of spy’s caught during this time.
Zoe B.
01/23/2020 18:33Point...it was a democrat president...and you are a democrat...what does that say about your intelligence
Weiber T.
01/23/2020 07:37Oh my heart cries for you boo who go home
Jim V.
01/20/2020 05:01Time of war stop
Arnulfo C.
01/18/2020 15:41America its. A continente no its a country
Jackie G.
01/17/2020 19:58This was a great injustice done to them and reparations were paid ... end of story
Martinez J.
01/15/2020 23:04We must never forget
James L.
01/15/2020 16:31Takei- Takei 2020 got my vote
Joshua H.
01/15/2020 15:25I could care less. At least y’all got reparations so stfu about it.
Daniel E.
01/14/2020 19:12To. Bad. Tell. Japes. In. Japan. About. Your. Problem. Thy. Started. The. War
Amador E.
01/13/2020 23:25Asiáticos americanos... Ó Japoneses estadounidenses. América es desde Argentina hasta Alaska.
Howard A.
01/13/2020 05:37And America paid reparations to the Japanese for that injustice.But doesn't feel blacks are due the same for there treatment in America
Kevin W.
01/12/2020 22:37It was wartime
Lloyd T.
01/10/2020 19:00U noticed they used a white woman in the pic.
Reuel L.
01/10/2020 01:21Until the day that he died!
Joseph P.
01/10/2020 01:00Oh problem there they were not concentration camps due to the fact that they were not a constant flow of people riding every single day and being either put the death in some sort of device or forced to work till they died and they were not starved it wasn’t the best but it was a prisoner of war campAnd the reasoning behind this is because the United States was afraid of people that were still loyal to the Japanese. All forces so I mean either we had a choice of killing them all sending them all out of the country or in prison them and call sadly enough and present them what is the easiest thing