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.