We visited the site of the Japanese American Internment camp at Heart Mountain yesterday. Today, some houses and ranches can be seen from the site, but it is easy to imagine the barren desolation that must have greeted the internees as they got off a train, in the middle of nowhere, so far from their homes.
The barracks hosed several families, each with a small area to live in, with little privacy. These barracks were each built in about an hour, of # 3 green wood, that shrank, leaving spaces between the outer boards, letting in the Wyoming winters. Tar paper was nailed over the outside to help keep the wind out.
There were schools, movie theaters, a hospital, library and other amenities. One particularly poignant story tells of the first student body president of the high school, later to join the army and die in France for his country, that was treating his family as the enemy.
The internees worked on irrigation projects and farmed near the camp. Several young men served in the US military.
The government spent millions on these camps at a time when every resource was needed for the war effort.
I don't believe in collective guilt and I don't buy into the current movement in the US of my country, always wrong, but I do believe in the study of history and learning from history. The most important lesson should not be self righteous judgement so common in hind sight. We are all prisoners of our times. The most important lesson, in my opinion, is to know that most of us would have approved of the camps at that time, and that makes me question my own integrity.
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