The Curtis Ando Internship at Heart Mountain is a paid internship awarded to a Park County high school student (junior or senior) with interests in history, museum studies, social studies, agriculture, arts, education, and more as they relate to the incarceration of Japanese Americans at Heart Mountain during World War II. The intern will also receive a new laptop.
The duties and schedule are flexible. However, we require a specific number of hours to be logged. We have also identified some pre-determined tasks, including serving Heart Mountain Interpretive Center visitors and supporting our full-time staff on projects.
The internship will begin part-time in mid-to-late April with a Saturday schedule. The position will be full-time during the summer (approximately June 1 – August 15), with an option to extend on a part-time basis through early October. The intern will also be expected to assist during Heart Mountain’s annual Pilgrimage event on July 24-26, 2025. This exciting opportunity provides a valued educational and professional experience that can be shaped according to the intern’s interests.
The Curtis Ando Internship at Heart Mountain is funded by the generous support of an anonymous donor. Its overall aim is to:
- Increase understanding of and interest in the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans at Heart Mountain, including its historical context, long-term legacy, and contemporary relevance
- Amplify the story of Curtis Ando
- Provide a powerful professional opportunity for young people in Park County, Wyoming
About Curtis Ando
On the evening of January 2, 1967, Private First Class (PFC) Curtis Ando was fatally shot by a fellow Marine while on patrol in Da Nang, Vietnam. A victim of “friendly fire,” Curtis was Park County, Wyoming’s first casualty of the Vietnam War. Despite petitions from his family to government officials not to place Curtis on the front lines where he could be confused for the enemy or be directly targeted due to his ethnicity, those petitions were brushed aside.
Today, some question the official military account of Curtis’s tragic death shortly after arriving in Vietnam. While the complete details may never be fully known, his death adds to the tragedy of war and the hostility that Asian Americans have faced from early immigration to World War II, Vietnam, and up to the present.
The racism and war hysteria that surrounded Curtis’ death at the age of 23 also led to the incarceration of his mother, Marguerite Sadako Takaki, during World War II. Along with more than 120,000 other people of Japanese ancestry, the Takaki family was forced from their home in California in the spring of 1942. They were sent to the Pomona “Assembly Center” (a racetrack turned into a temporary prison camp with deplorable living conditions) and then to the Heart Mountain camp located between Cody and Powell, Wyoming. Many of the Takaki family stayed at Heart Mountain for the duration of the war, only being allowed to leave in late 1945.
The Ando family, in contrast, had been farming south of Powell, Wyoming, since the 1930s. Because their farm was outside of the West Coast “Exclusion Zone,” they were not imprisoned. Toshio “Chuck” Ando, Curtis’s father, began taking over his aging father’s farm as the U.S. entered World War II. Chuck hired workers, including Japanese Americans, to assist with daily farm activities from the Heart Mountain camp. One incarceree who had been granted temporary work leave to assist on the Ando farm was Marguerite Takaki. Marguerite was later granted indefinite leave by the War Relocation Authority when she married Chuck in December 1943.
Chuck and Marguerite had four children who all attended Park County schools. Curtis graduated from Powell High School in 1963, where he was a star athlete, lettering in basketball and football. A member of the National Honor Society and Vice President of the Wyoming Student Body Association his junior year, Curtis was well-liked by teachers and his peers. He later attended two years of college at Montana State University before enlisting in the US Marine Corps on February 20, 1966.
Thus, Curtis’s life story begins with two immigrant families who came to the United States for personal freedoms and the American Dream. From the racial oppression that led to his mother’s unjust incarceration during WWII as well as to his own heartbreaking death at the hands of a fellow soldier during the Vietnam War, Curtis Ando’s story is a Wyoming story that deserves to be known widely.
Application Requirements
To be considered for The Curtis Ando Internship at Heart Mountain, applicants must:
- Be legally eligible to work in the U.S.
- Be a junior or senior at a high school or home school program in Park County, Wyoming
- Have reliable transportation to and from the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center, halfway between Cody and Powell (1539 Road 19, Powell, WY 82435)
- Be able to work Saturdays at the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center during May and up to 40 hours per week, including some weekend hours, throughout the summer break (approximately June 1 – August 15)
- Be able to assist in preparing and staffing the annual Heart Mountain Pilgrimage, which takes place during the last week of July (July 24-26, 2025).
- Upon completing the internship, you must be willing to be interviewed for a featured article in Heart Mountain’s Kokoro Kara magazine
- Applicants are required to supply one reference, who needs to complete this reference form. Please note, the reference cannot be a relative.
- Complete and submit the internship application and reference form by March 20th, 2025.