As the President Invokes Alien Enemies Act, a Museum is Dedicated to Sharing the Stories
Just a few miles south of the Montana border, the largest incarceration of Japanese Americans took place during World War II
HEART MOUNTAIN, Wyoming — The last time a U.S. President invoked the Alien Enemies Act, Heart Mountain happened. Almost over night, a remote yet beautiful square mile of land deep within the nation’s interior became the third largest city in Wyoming, populated by people who were rounded up in raids and sent packing, hemmed in by guard towers and floodlights.
Hysteria, patriotism and racism — all things the U.S. government later acknowledged — allowed President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to invoke the act after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and then an executive order that allowed federal, state and local authorities to round up anyone of Japanese descent living on the West coast and send them to camps like Heart Mountain.
Though two-thirds of the people were American citizens of Japanese-American descent, their homes and business were lost, and they survived Wyoming’s rugged weather with whatever they could cram into a suitcase.
Current U.S. President Donald J. Trump recently invoked the act, which was passed in 1798, revoking protection status for Venezuelan immigrants who were living here legally, declaring a multi-national drug cartel to be running gangs in America. The presidential action is now tied up in a host of court actions, including whether residents who were here legally can have their status revoked without due process, and whether the executive branch can invoke the act when not at war or without approval of Congress.
Heart Mountain, run by the nonpartisan Heart Mountain Foundation, is just a dozen miles from the Montana border, created from Roosevelt’s order. The museum points out that the camps happened under a Democratic president, while apologies and reparations came from Republicans. It’s not silent about what happened at the camp, nor what it could mean that the same acts and policies are being resurrected today, even if used in a different context.
“We need to acknowledge that it’s not about responding to Donald Trump,” Heart Mountain Executive Director Aura Sunada Newlin said on a recent tour. “Immigration policy is something our country has struggled with for a long time. We have not treated immigrants with a lot of humanity.”
She said places and museums like Heart Mountain help “humanize history” so that people understand something abstract — like political policies — and how it affects people in America and their families.
“We have to be willing to discuss these challenging issues,” she said.
History and Heart Mountain
In 1812, when the Alien Enemies Act was first used, the concern was for British sympathizers. In 1918, as many as 6,500 Germans suspected of being alien enemies were rounded up. And, during World War II the act was invoked to round-up and imprison citizens and foreign nationals alike who shared a common Japanese heritage.
Heart Mountain, an out-of-sight place, has a few scattered buildings that stand as a reminder of what happened the last time a president invoked the power to round up people based on nationality or race.
Heart Mountain was so hastily constructed that the “green lumber” used for military style barracks hadn’t fully dried. By the time it cured in the wind-blown high mountain region, about a dozen miles from the Montana border, gaps in the barracks could span a half-inch, leading to the joke that the camps had both hot and cold-running dust.
Residents who were used to warmer coastal climates weren’t quite prepared for the harsh winters or the pounding summer sun.
Heart Mountain became the largest “camps” of the Wartime Relocation Administration, which rounded up first- and second-generation immigrants from the west coast states and sent them deep into the Rocky Mountain interior near Powell, Wyoming. At its height, more than 11,000 residents lost their homes, businesses and even pets in the name of national security. Another detention camp was located in Missoula, a camp that was created even before Roosevelt’s executive order.
In an official apology issued by the U.S. government decades later, the federal government admitted the reason for the camps wasn’t safety, security or even threats of espionage, instead it was racism and political incompetence that created the camps that dotted the American interior.
Such camps had been contemplated for years by then, by leaders such as Roosevelt. White Americans had regarded their Japanese-American counterparts in places like California and Oregon with suspicion for their growing prosperity, and willingness to take jobs others wouldn’t.
When World War II ended by dropping devastating bombs on Imperial Japan, the camps disbanded and residents were forced to resume their lives, often feeling shame about the three-year hiatus that ripped some families apart.
Today, not many of the buildings from the original Heart Mountain site remain. A few barracks and the towering smokestack from the hospital and infirmary rise to challenge the summit of Heart Mountain. Ironically, most of the barracks that were built were displaced themselves, sold for $1 each to returning soldiers who needed homes after the end of World War II. Those barracks are still parts of homesteads, farms and ranches today. The town site that included schools, a newspaper, mess halls and a furniture manufacturing building has returned to a field not unlike the others that surround it. Down the hill, close to a guard tower with razor wire that is still standing, a Smithsonian-affiliated museum tells stories about hysteria, racism, distrust and families who were traumatized after being rounded up and relocated.
A legacy, pilgrimage, and lasting effects
Executive Director Sunada Newlin doesn’t just know the history of this place because she’s studied it — she’s lived with it her whole life, even though she was born decades after the camp closed. Her grandparents were some the residents, even though they had lived in Wyoming, coming first to work as railroad laborers and miners. Still, her family was placed there, and in a display that highlights some of camp’s residents’ military service during World War II are items from her grandfather’s time in the U.S. Army. He was serving his country while his family was incarcerated. And, in another twist of historical irony, a unit of Japanese-American soldiers fighting in Europe would help liberate the German Nazi concentration camp of Dachau, while family members in America were imprisoned.
The museum and its legacy includes the Simpson-Mineta Institute, named for recently deceased former Wyoming Senator Alan K. Simpson and former United States Secretary of Commerce Norman Mineta, who became lifelong friends after meeting each other as youth in Boy Scouts — Simpson a ranch kid from the area, and Mineta one of those incarcerated there. Despite the political differences, Simpson was a Republican and Mineta a Democrat, they came together to form a friendship and ongoing dialogue about solutions. The Institute is looking to continue that legacy of dialogue, and Sunada Newlin said that’s one of the ways that Heart Mountain can become something more than a place to chronicle inhumanity.
However, the lasting effects of an immigration policy nearly 80 years ago still reverberate. Every summer, Heart Mountain hosts a “pilgrimage” where families and the descendants of families come back to remember what happened, as well as work through the aftermath, which left many families devastated and broken, losing a lifetime of work and property.
“We’ve moved away from reminding people that two-thirds of the people who came here were American citizens because the fact is that we shouldn’t have done this to anyone,” Sunada Newlin said. “Just because some weren’t citizens doesn’t mean it was right.”
Sunada Newlin said that learning more and understanding about generational trauma has been helpful. For many of the camp’s incarcerees, their time in Wyoming wasn’t discussed, but that doesn’t mean the families weren’t affected. Children, many born at Heart Mountain, were encouraged to assimilate, abandon any Japanese traditions, and work even harder to fit into American society. Those effects still ripple, she said, even as the latest generation of Japanese-Americans seems ready to claim proudly its history, converting their family’s history and ties to the camps as a point of pride rather than shame.
“This place of pain and loss, we’re relearning that part of our history and there’s a lot of healing that needs to be done,” Sunada Newlin said.
She said part of that pain comes from not doing anything wrong, yet being punished.
“The message was: You’re dangerous,” Sunada Newlin said. “And in the Japanese culture, you’re not supposed to do anything that would bring shame upon your culture or family.”
She said that most of the incarcerees believed the best way to demonstrate their patriotism was through compliance, largely “for the sake of their children.” However, Heart Mountain’s history — nearly 14,000 people would call it home for some of the war’s duration — includes the largest number of draft resisters from any Japanese camp. Those resistors became a unique challenge for the government: They said they were willing to serve in the United States military as long as their rights and property were restored.
The purpose of the museum and preserving the space isn’t just to commemorate an ignoble part of the country’s history, rather the aftermath and how it affects its citizens. Sunada Newlin said that the perception that Japanese-Americans who had be incarcerated just resumed their lives is only somewhat true, even though Japanese-Americans have also become a sort of “model minority.”
“That idea itself has become real toxic,” Sunada Newlin said.
‘We have to talk about the hard things’
The idea that thousands of people returned to a normal life belies the number of suicides, addiction and broken families that resulted. She said it’s also about connecting with other fractured communities. Newlin said the irony of Heart Mountain is that it became significant to Japanese-Americans, even as it holds a different significance for the Apsaalooke (Crow) people who consider the mountain sacred, but were displaced by European settlers. That’s why Heart Mountain also holds regular ceremonies with Native leaders, including smudging to honor the place that holds deep connections to very different cultural groups.
“A lot of our response when people come to see this place is: I didn’t know about it,” Sunada Newlin said. “Adults are horrified because they didn’t know America did this. It’s also interesting because when school-age kids come here, they get it instantly. They understand picking on groups, on bullying.”
One of the many historical displays that seems to have an outsized effect on students is stories of Japanese-Americans having to leave their pets behind.
“To push the negative stuff under the carpet is why most people don’t know we exist,” Sunada Newlin said. “We have to talk about the hard things in the past so we don’t do this again.”
She said some who come to the museum feel anger, others shame, and some even get defensive, citing the horrific treatment of American soldiers by Imperial Japan during the Bataan Death March.
“Guilt is not a very productive approach. The only way to address what went wrong is to empower the next generation to do something different,” Sunada Newlin said. “It would be sad if this is nothing more than gathering stories. This is a place to find hope for the future, and that future is bringing together communities that wouldn’t necessarily come together.”
For example, recently the center sponsored a friendship and week-long experience for youth members of the Apsaalooke tribe and descendants of Heart Mountain to spend time camping and learning about each other’s culture. Sunada Newlin said they had more in common than they realized.
“It gave them a cause they could own,” she said of the younger generation.
Sunada Newlin and her staff also hope that taking the first step — seeing a museum dedicated to the poor, illegal treatment of citizens by the U.S. government, will give visitors courage to tackle other difficult issues.
“We want to be the place where we’re inviting people to have constructive dialogue about very difficult subjects,” Sunada Newlin said. That could range from race, immigration and national security.
“If they were problems that are easily fixed, we would have fixed them a long time ago,” Sunada Newlin said.
Still, as a person whose own family is deeply tied to Heart Mountain, and even as she has led the organization for three years, she was shocked to hear many of the past justifications and plans that led to Heart Mountain be used for a new generation, as migrants are being deported, detained and rounded-up.
“It’s troubling to me personally and for our foundation,” she said. “It’s not necessarily surprising or new. The level is new. The truth is that there’s always been a danger, and so we want to educate as widely as we can.”
As many different visitors that come through doors react, there is one thing that neither Newlin or assistant director Rebecca McKinley, haven’t heard.
“No one has said, ‘This could never happen again,’” McKinley said.
By Darrell Ehrlick for the Daily Montanan
trump obviously doesn't understand history, the Alien Enemies Act, the Constitution or decency. He is only interested in advancing his own interests, and Putin's interests.