The Modern West 51: Remembering World War II

During World War II, the U.S. Army was one of the first armies to adopt a semi-automatic rifle as its standard infantry arm. This was a big deal because during the war, most countries were still fighting with bolt action rifles, which are slower and don't have quite as much fire power.  

A documentary and book explores what happened to the barracks at Heart Mountain detention camp for Japanese Americans after World War Two. The film released in December 2017, “Moving Walls: The Barracks of America’s Concentration Camps,” tells the little-known story of how hundreds of the barracks were sold to veterans to homestead in Northwest Wyoming. Sharon Yamato, the filmmaker, wanted to explore the connection between these two different communities in an effort to create a dialogue. Wyoming Public Radio’s Kamila Kudelska asked Yamato what was the significance of the barracks to the homesteaders.

Last year, the Arizona Final Salute Foundation asked University of Wyoming student Cassidy Newkirk to paint the sinking of the USS Arizona during the attack on Pearl Harbor. Prints of the painting would help raise money to fly the six remaining survivors of the Arizona to Hawaii to be honored at the 75th anniversary ceremony. But as soon as she began the work, Newkirk said strange things started happening.

When Newkirk was commissioned she said she was given certain guidelines. 

A new book compiles government photos of Japanese-Americans in World War II incarceration camps, including Heart Mountain in Wyoming. For the first time, some of the people in the photos have been interviewed. 

Those interviews are included in Un-American: The Incarceration of Japanese Americans During World War II. Author Richard Cahan joined Wyoming Public Radio’s Erin Jones to talk about the stories of the photos.

Nearly 70 years after World War II, a little known story of war-time heroism is surfacing. The book “Escape from Davao: The Forgotten Story of the Most Daring Prison Break of the Pacific War” and the documentary film “4-4-43” tell the story of ten American soldiers and two Filipino convicts who escaped a Japanese prison camp in the Philippines.