From an unlikely WWII-era friendship, plans for strengthening democracy

148966 Former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming stands in front of the plaque honoring Heart Mountain incarcerees who served in the U.S. military. Here, he and his boyhood friend Norman Mineta, a former incarceree who became a Democratic congressman, sometimes spoke to visitors before Mr. Mineta's death in May 2022.Christa Case Bryant/The Christian Science Monitor

August 1, 2022

As a kid, Alan Simpson watched the tar-paper shacks shoot up in the prairie nearby, as the government hastily constructed a camp after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941. The signs around town went up equally fast, as 14,000 Japanese Americans, uprooted from their lives on the West Coast, were detained in the shadow of Heart Mountain, one of 10 such camps.

“This is for their own good,” he recalls one sign saying. Others used ethnic slurs to make clear the newcomers – some of whom worked in town – were not welcome at certain establishments. Meanwhile, Gov. Nels Smith criticized California for using Wyoming as a “dumping ground” for a distrusted population.

Among the newcomers was Norman Mineta, a kid from San Jose who loved baseball but had his bat taken away by authorities upon entering the camp. So he would sneak through the fence to the river to fish and hunt magpies, like the local boys, Mr. Simpson recalls. But Mr. Simpson might never have learned that had it not been for Glenn Livingston, his Boy Scout troop leader in nearby Cody, Wyoming.

“There are three Boy Scout troops out there and they’re all American, just like you,” Mr. Simpson remembers him saying. “We’re going to go out there for a jamboree.”

Under the guard towers manned by soldiers and searchlights, 11-year-old Al and Norm practiced tying knots, shared a tent, and built a moat around it, directing the runoff to a bully’s tent down the hill, which sent them into fits of laughter. Three decades later, Mr. Simpson was serving in the Wyoming state legislature when he learned that his old chum had also entered politics, becoming the first Japanese American mayor of a major city – San Jose, California.

“Do you remember the fat kid who cackled and tied knots?” Mr. Simpson wrote in a letter to Mr. Mineta, describing himself. The young mayor sure did.

That unlikely boyhood friendship, forged amid fear and hatred, grew into a bipartisan force to be reckoned with after Mr. Mineta was elected a Democratic representative to Congress and Mr. Simpson became a Republican senator. They worked their respective sides of the aisle to secure reparations for Japanese Americans, and were each respected by the other side for their bipartisan spirit. President George W. Bush appointed Mr. Mineta to his Cabinet, and President Barack Obama tasked Mr. Simpson in 2010 with co-chairing the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

148966 Christa Case Bryant/The Christian Science MonitorThe Interpretive Center at Heart Mountain in Powell, Wyoming, details the wartime relocation and confinement of Japanese Americans here during World War II. The building, which opened in 2011, is modeled after the original barracks.

In honor of their example, the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation broke ground this weekend on the Mineta-Simpson Institute, which will be located adjacent to an existing interpretative center and provide a forum for talks, workshops, and other events to address today’s resurgent tribalism.

“The friendship of Norm and Al really represents what this nation can be, and what this nation should be,” said Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming, whose first exposure to campaigning was crisscrossing the state with her father, Dick Cheney, and Mr. Simpson in 1978 when they were running for the House and Senate, respectively. In her remarks at the groundbreaking ceremony, she added that their friendship “demonstrated what can be accomplished when we come together and we put the good of our country ahead of any politics or partisanship.”

The idea for the Mineta-Simpson Institute was driven by former incarcerees serving on the foundation’s board who saw present-day echoes of the politics of fear that had led to their community’s detention. They see a redemptive value in bringing the lessons of their experience to bear on the challenges of today, and providing an example of how national division and distrust can be overcome.

The foundation has raised $7.1 million of their $8.25 million goal and plans to open the institute’s doors next summer. They hope to eventually draw members of state legislatures or even Congress, where a coarsening partisanship has caused that institution to largely grind to a halt – both reflecting and fueling the national divides over everything from abortion to voting rights.

“It’s exhausting to have to feel so much anger toward each other,” says Aura Sunada Newlin, interim executive director of the foundation.

“There are tremendous museums in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles and Seattle. But there’s something different when you come and set foot on a place where people were actually incarcerated on the basis of race,” adds Ms. Newlin, a great-granddaughter of Heart Mountain incarcerees. Plus, the expansiveness and barren beauty of the landscape create a unique environment for contemplation, adds the fourth-generation Wyomingite. “I feel like it’s so important for people to come and feel that – to feel uncomfortable, to feel small and vulnerable in the face of this huge sky. And to imagine what it must have felt like to arrive in this place.”

Christa Case Bryant/The Christian Science MonitorCobblestones leading to the entrance of the Interpretative Center at Heart Mountain pay tribute to the thousands of Japanese Americans who endured their detainment here during World War II with grit and resilience. Moving forward without bitterness

Moving forward without bitterness

When Sam Mihara arrived as a fourth grader from San Francisco, he and his parents and brother were assigned a 20-foot square barrack room with four military cots, no electricity, and no water. They used communal toilets with no partitions and were served bread and potatoes with pickled vegetables. His father went blind and his grandfather died due to medical mistreatment, he says in a phone interview.

While many of the older generation felt it their duty to remain loyal to the United States, he watched young Japanese Americans gather after dinner to discuss resisting the draft. Among them was Takashi Hoshizaki, who went to jail instead of serving in the military, and received an apology from the government only decades later – along with $20,000 in reparations, thanks to the legislation Representative Mineta and Senator Simpson advanced.

For a long time, Mr. Mihara felt bitter about his experience and wouldn’t set foot in Wyoming.

“I had a lot of hate,” he says. “Finally, it dawned on me – it doesn’t do much good to be bitter. ... The best thing I can do is to educate, so that future leaders don’t make the same mistake.”

Over the past 10 years, he has spoken to more than 90,000 students of all ages across the country, from Columbia Law School to Heart Mountain, where he serves on the foundation’s board.

“When I give talks, sometimes I get the question – ‘Do you still believe in America?’” he says. “The answer is yes,” he adds, noting that in many countries it wouldn’t have been possible to criticize the government the way he has. “As long as we are free to address the mistakes that we’ve made and do our best to correct them, I think we’ll be OK.”

148966 Edward O. Eisenhand/AP/FileWorkers build a reservoir in July 1942 at the Heart Mountain camp, where more than 14,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly detained during World War II. The incarcerees, some of whom had prospered as farmers in California, worked the dusty, barren land during their detention.

Likewise, Mr. Hoshizaki, the draft resister and a fellow board member, says he feels no bitterness – only a desire to help secure civil rights for all, including through the Mineta-Simpson Institute. “I’m going to push hard to make sure that on a constitutional level the denial of civil rights will not happen to other groups,” he says.

Mr. Mineta, as secretary of Transportation under President George W. Bush, was responsible for grounding all air traffic on 9/11 and later helped ensure that Muslim Americans were not singled out by the government the way his community had been after Pearl Harbor. His memorial service in Washington this spring – held just two days after the Jan. 6 committee started hearings on one of the most divisive days in modern history – drew hundreds of people, including Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and former Bush chief of staff Andrew Card. They each gave tributes, along with Mr. Mineta’s boyhood friend from Wyoming.

“I was a beneficiary of a giant man,” said Senator Simpson, whose eulogy drew the heartiest applause.

In an interview with the Monitor several weeks earlier, sitting in a sunny room of the Heart Mountain interpretative center with his wife, Ann, overlooking the grassland where thousands of barracks once held his friend and thousands of others, he said that a center where people could come together to discuss racism, hysteria, hate, and partisanship “would be the fondest hope of my life or his.”

“Creating a new future”

The Mineta-Simpson Institute’s programming got underway this summer with workshops for 72 educators from around the country on how to take these lessons of history and apply it to their teaching of the Constitution and civil rights, a weeklong program supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. They also plan to pilot leadership workshops for next year on how to break through tribalism to find practical solutions – an initiative that will likely start with local leaders and expand to include state legislators as well as leaders from corporate, nonprofit, and community organizations.

Other initiatives include an artist series, private retreats, events for the public to support an engaged citizenry, and a lecture series named after Maurice Walk, a government lawyer who resigned his post in protest of the treatment of Japanese Americans. While many of the institute’s activities will harness the power of place at Heart Mountain, the foundation also plans to expand its reach through online programming.

“We’re not just talking about history, but making it relevant, taking the lessons of the past and using them to help people find common ground again,” says Deni Hirsh, the foundation’s membership and development manager.

Her big dream is that someday they can host the freshman class of representatives in Congress.

Dakota Russell, former executive director and a member of the advisory board, says the idea is that “before that tribal mindset sets in, that we capture them then and really offer a viable alternative.” And they have proof that it works in a relationship that started right here, despite the barbed wire that divided their communities.

From an unlikely WWII-era friendship, plans for strengthening democracy

by By Christa Case Bryant, CSM Staff writer @christacbryant from POWELL, WYO.

Share