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Special Exhibits

Parallel Barbed Wire:

From Heart Mountain to Dachau


OPENING FEBRUARY 18


Parallel Barbed Wire: From Heart Mountain to Dachau explores the story of the unlikely meeting between Clarence Matsumura, a Heart Mountain incarceree who joined the segregated 522nd Field Artillery Battalion, and Solly Ganor, a Lithuanian Jew who experienced persecution, ghettoization, and concentration camps. Many people are aware of the incarceration of Japanese Americans in the United States and the Holocaust in Europe. However, not many people know that these histories intersected for a short period in April and May 1945. The connection between Clarence and Solly sheds light on the little-known history of Japanese American liberation of the Dachau subcamps and death march.


PAST EXHIBITS:

Banner image announcing new Nisei animators exhibit featuring illustrated mouse Hashimoto-San

Bob Kuwahara & the Nisei Animators

In 1959, a cartoon mouse named Hashimoto-San stepped onto the silver screen for the very first time. He wasn’t destined for celebrity—like that other mouse—but to his creator, Bob Kuwahara, he was everything. Bob had been an animator in some of America’s biggest cartoon studios before World War II, but that all changed when he and 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated in 1942. Learn how Bob and other Japanese American animators like Willie Ito and Gyo Fujikawa used their talents to help bring a little laughter into the lives of incacerees and eventually go on to create some of the most iconic scenes in animation history.

Wyoming Humanities Logo

This exhibit was made possible with partial funding by Wyoming Humanities.


Dusted Off special exhibit open now image featuring a braille to Japanese translation board

Dusted Off: Recent Acquisitions

When camp closed in November 1945, the government moved quickly to erase the Heart Mountain camp from the landscape. Today, the memory of camp lives on through physical items that were created, used, and saved by the 14,000 Japanese Americans incarcerated here and the white staff employed by the War Relocation Authority. The staff at Heart Mountain Interpretive Center works to unlock the stories contained in each artifact. The items in this exhibit were collected within the past two years, and represent only a fraction of the Heart Mountain collection.


Special exhibit History Often Rhymes COVID-19 Exhibit banner image

History Often Rhymes

COVID-19 and the Racialization of Disease

History Often Rhymes: COVID-19 and the Racialization of Disease explored the parallels of past outbreaks with the current pandemic and the roles race, discrimination, scapegoating, and perceived foreignness play in reactions to public health threats.

“History doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes.” We like to believe that something like the incarceration of Japanese Americans could never happen again. But times of crisis, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic, often result in discrimination and attacks on Asian Americans and other minority groups. Old prejudices can suddenly reemerge under fear, anger, and stress. In our country’s history, immigration, race, and disease have always been intertwined. Remembering that can help us to avoid making the same mistakes again.


Special exhibit Songs on the Wind banner image

Songs on the Wind

The role of music inside the camp

Special exhibit Joe Nakanishi: Perspective banner image

Joe Nakanishi: Perspective

An artist looks back on his years at Heart Mountain

Special exhibit The Mountain Was Our Secret banner image

The Mountain Was Our Secret

Watercolors by former incarceree Estelle Ishigo


Special exhibit Connecting the Pieces banner image

Connecting the Pieces

Dialogues on the Amache Archaeology Collection
(University of Denver)

Special exhibit American Self banner image

American Self: Roger Shimomura

Selected works by artist Roger Shimomura


Special exhibit Moving Walls banner image

Moving Walls

Heart Mountain Barracks in the Bighorn Basin

Special exhibit Incarceration in Focus banner image

Incarceration in Focus

A Comparative Look at the Photographs of Ansel Adams and Yoshio Okumoto

Special exhibit The Fabric of Memory banner image

The Fabric of Memory

Textile art inspired by the experiences of Heart Mountain incarcerees


Explore the history of Heart Mountain more on our history pages here.

To learn about our current safety and cleaning protocols, visit our Coronavirus page.