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The Online Encyclopedia of Wyoming History

Japanese-Americans in Wyoming

Japanese-Americans in Wyoming

The Internment Camp at Heart Mountain, 1942-1945

From 1942 through 1945, about 10,000 Japanese-Americans lived behind barbed wire at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center between Cody and Powell, Wyo. in Park County—one of ten such camps around the nation during World War II. The center for a time was Wyoming’s third-largest town. Offered here are study guides, photos and links to primary and secondary sources for classroom investigation.

A Brief History of Heart Mountain Relocation Center

From 1942 through most of 1945, about 10,000 Japanese-Americans from the West Coast of United States lived behind barbed wire in tarpaper barracks at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center between Cody and Powell, Wyo. in Park County—one of ten such camps around the nation during World War II. The center was briefly Wyoming’s third-largest town. When hundreds of young men in the camp were drafted into the U.S. military, 63 resisted, feeling they had been denied their constitutional rights. They and seven more leaders of the group were sentenced to federal prison. In the 1980s, Congress passed a law granting an apology and $20,000 to every survivor of the camps.

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