Wyoming center tells story of Japanese-American internees

[AsahinaKimi]

Cut free: Norman Mineta (left), an ex-internee who later served as U.S. transportation secretary, looks on as fellow internees cut a "ribbon" of barbed wire at the Aug. 20 opening ceremony for the Heart Mountain Interpretive Learning Center in Wyoming. KYODO PHOTO

By JODY GODOY
Kyodo

HEART, Mountain Wyoming — Nob Shimokochi still remembers the hardship he suffered as a Japanese-American during World War II. "We used to say the Pledge of Allegiance in camp. 'With liberty and justice for all,' we said, and that irritated me like a pebble in my shoe.

"I used to say 'liberty and justice for some' but I didn't say it very loudly. I was afraid the FBI would make me disappear."

Shimokochi, 82, is one of more than 14,000 Japanese-Americans who were taken to the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming almost 70 years ago. Forced by the U.S. government to evacuate their homes on the West Coast due to the view that they were a military threat because of their Japanese ancestry, they lived in barracks in the barren desert for up to three years.

On Aug. 20, 250 former internees returned to the prairie where the camp used to stand, to meet old friends and see their experiences memorialized in the Heart Mountain Interpretive Learning Center, a new educational facility that opened the same day.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110902f1.html

[FLPanhandle]

1. A warning of how fear can lead us all to do stupid things.

There was never any real threat from Japanese-Americans. They were locked up because of fear.

[ChandlerJr]

2. We have nothing to fear but fear itself.

How ironic are those words?

[AsahinaKimi]

3. One of my best friends grand parents were interned at Manzanar

She had told us a lot of stories about that place, and how they had lost their house and possessions in San Francisco.

[stevedeshazer]

4. That was wrong.

We have a memorial here in Portland.

http://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/entry/view/japanese_american_historical_plaza_portland/