The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation invites teachers of grades 5-12 from around the country to spend a week of summer 2021 learning about the Japanese American incarceration online. Beginning with the stories of the first immigrants from Japan, the workshop will take participants through the Pearl Harbor attack and wartime hysteria that followed, to the incarceration, and eventually to the apology and redress payments by the federal government in 1988. Teachers will be guided in developing dynamic lessons using primary and secondary source materials such as digitized artifacts, oral histories, and newspapers.
This National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Landmarks of American History and Culture workshop will be offered twice: June 21-25 and July 19-23, 2021. Participants will have the opportunity to experience and engage with the local culture. Participants of both sessions can also participate in the annual pilgrimage of former World War II incarcerees and their family members to the Heart Mountain confinement site which will also be virtual.
Some of our sessions will be broadcast live from the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center; the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation is the institutional host. The workshop will also work with two local museums: the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody and the Homesteader Museum in Powell.
The application period has now closed. Applicants will be notified of acceptance status on March 26, 2021. Successful applicants will have until April 2, 2021 to accept or decline.