Heart Mountain speaker to visit

A man who was confined at Heart Mountain during World War II will speak to Green River High School students Oct. 10.

Sam Mihara will present "Memories of Heart Mountain," which details his time as a prisoner at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center to GRHS students, which will then be followed by another presentation at White Mountain Library Oct. 10 at 7 p.m., according to Ruth Ann Foerster, a U.S. history and geography teacher at GRHS.

Mihara is a second generation Japanese-American who was one of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, mostly American citizens, who were forced into 10 internment camps during the war. Mihara's family was sent to a detention camp in Pomona, Calif., before being sent to Heart Mountain for three years, where they lived in a single room measuring 20 feet by 20 feet.

After the war, his family was released. Mihara graduated from U.C. Berkley and UCLA's graduate school with degrees in engineering and became a rocket scientist at Boeing. After retiring from Boeing, he started a consulting firm.

According to his website, sammihara.com, he created "Memories of Heart Mountain" to educate people and ensure similar civil rights violations wouldn't happen again. His presentation focuses on his family's story and what happened to them, as well as the reason behind the camps' creation and lessons learned from the experience. It incorporates images and information from both government and private photo collections, including several images initially impounded from public viewing.

Foerster said the opportunity to host Mihara came about after she and Jordan Leyba, another GRHS social studies teacher, met him at a conference at Heart Mountain.

She said Mihara asked if they would be interested in hosting his presentation as it receives sponsorship in Wyoming and costs individual districts a minimal amount.

"This is a unique opportunity to hear a first-hand account of life as a Japanese-American in the Japanese Internment Camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor," Foerster wrote in an email to the Star. "People listening will get an interesting perspective of life during World War II."