HEART MOUNTAIN CHRONICLES: The History of a Japanese Relocation Center

By Bernard and James Murphy. 

This is the story of a city. Heart Mountain Chronicles is a  meticulously researched account of the construction and operation of one  of the ten prison camps built by the U.S. Government in the summer of  1942 to incarcerate persons of Japanese ancestry living along the West  Coast after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The book details the planning, administration, and services that were  developed to intern 11,000 people at the Heart Mountain Relocation  Center in Wyoming. It’s the story of the physical as well as the social  infrastructure that the internees created for themselves: schools,  shops, a newspaper, hospital, fire department, and a system of  self-government. It is a fascinating study of a temporary city, the  resilience and creativity of the Japanese Americans interned there, and  all the accompanying community services that they created from scratch  in a short time with few resources.

The Heart Mountain Relocation Center was constructed in just 60 days  and became the third-largest city in Wyoming at the time. Japanese  evacuees were interned there from August 12, 1942, until November 10,  1945, when the last of its residents left to rebuild their interrupted  lives. Although the purpose of the Camp ceased to exist after the war,  Heart Mountain continued to house others until the mid-1950s. After  WWII, the Camp was managed by the Bureau of Reclamation, and its  remaining facilities were used to support the construction of the  Shoshone Reclamation Project, which provides irrigation for crops in  Wyoming’s Big Horn Basin.

Included is a chapter describing the efforts that led to its listing  on the National Registry of Historic Places in 1985 and its designation as a National Historic Landmark in 2006.

Paper: 678 pp.