Tom Brokaw to Receive Award at Heart Mountain

A legendary newscaster and author will be visiting Park County next month to receive a prestigious award from the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation.

Tom Brokaw will receive the third LaDonna Zall Compassionate Witness Award during the Foundation’s annual Pilgrimage event on Saturday, July 27, at the location of the World War II Japanese American confinement site.

Dakota Russell, director for the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center, says since speaking at the 2011 grand opening of the Center, Brokaw has continued to report on the injustice of the Japanese American incarceration, including an NBC News report marking the 75th anniversary of Japanese internment in 2017.

Russell adds that the award is named for LaDonna Zall, a Powell resident who witnessed the final train of prisoners leaving Heart Mountain in 1945 and was instrumental in building the interpretive center and curating its artifact collection.

The ninth annual Pilgrimage will take place July 25^th through the 27^th, and will feature the screening of a biopic about former incarceree Norman Mineta, and a keynote speech by Judge Lance Ito, whose parents were incarcerated at Heart Mountain.