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Pilgrimage to World War II incarceration site to highlight women’s experiences and connect survivors

Actor Tamlyn Tomita speaks at a pilgrimage event at Heart Mountain in 2013.
Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation
Tamlyn Tomita at the 2023 Heart Mountain Pilgrimage. The actor will appear in Chey Yew’s play “Question 27, Question 28” on Friday in downtown Cody. The play draws from oral histories of women who were incarcerated during World War II.

Up to around 500 people are expected to visit a site in northwest Wyoming later this week where Japanese-Americans were incarcerated during World War II.

This year’s pilgrimage is the biggest since the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation opened a museum at the confinement site near Cody in 2011. That’s according to the nonprofit’s Director of Communications and Strategy Ray Locker.

“We have a lot more first-time attendees who are either former incarcerees or family members. We are getting a lot of people who are interested in coming back and finding out more about their families,” he said.

One big draw this year is the opening of the Mineta-Simpson Institute, an archive and conference center inspired by the leadership and friendship between former U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyoming) and the late U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, who spent two years of his youth incarcerated at Heart Mountain.

Pilgrimage attendees can also sit in on author talks and tour an original hospital, a root cellar built to store food grown by incarcerees, and former barracks at the site where around 14,000 Americans were incarcerated between 1942-1945.

While registration for the pilgrimage is closed, the public is invited to attend a play in downtown Cody at 9 a.m. on Friday at the Wynona Thompson Auditorium at Cody High School. The performance, led by actor and descendent of Heart Mountain incarcerees, Tamyln Tomita, will share about the history of incarceration through women’s experiences and perspectives.

Olivia Weitz is based at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody. She covers Yellowstone National Park, wildlife, and arts and culture throughout the region. Olivia’s work has aired on NPR and member stations across the Mountain West. She is a graduate of the University of Puget Sound and the Transom story workshop. In her spare time, she enjoys skiing, cooking, and going to festivals that celebrate folk art and music.

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