Heart Mountain Program Highlights Staff

A program at the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center this weekend will highlight the roles of the people who were not held at the camp against their will – rather, they helped to make the lives of the internees productive.

The Center will host a special program on February 23, as part of its ongoing Winter Program Series, called “The People Outside the Fence”. Executive Director Dakota Russell will present the program on Saturday at 1 p.m., which is included with museum admission.

The program will highlight the role of the camp’s staff and administration. Heart Mountain employed dozens of staff and administrators, from all over the United States, to work—and sometimes even live—in the camp. Russell says the upcoming program will explore why some of these individuals chose to work at the camp, and how their work affected their attitudes about the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans.

Russell points out that the camp was part of the Park County community, and was an active employer of local workers. He notes that many people who believed the fearmongering stories about Japanese Americans in the newspapers had those views challenged by their firsthand experiences working at the camp.