The Books of Heart Mountain

Co-owner/Editor Peggy Turnbull shares:

The Books of Heart Mountain

On a trip West this summer, I discovered the wonders of museum and national park bookstores. They’re filled with items carefully selected to support their location’s theme. At the Crazy Horse Memorial site, I found a children’s book called Crazy Horse’s Vision by Joseph Bruchac. At the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, I found Nuclear Heartland. But the store that appealed to me most was at Heart Mountain, a WWII Japanese American Confinement Site near Cody, Wyoming.

After watching a movie about the history of relocation centers in the United States, pondering the Heart Mountain exhibits, and examining artifacts that told the story of the camp experience, I asked if any novels or books of poetry were available. A fellow customer recommended Danielle Steele’s Silent Honor, a novel about the internment experience, but the bookseller couldn’t attest to its accuracy and had not stocked it. The books available were all based on survivors’ testimonies or were works of scholarship. This bookseller was dedicated to providing the most reliable, accurate publications available on this difficult topic.

And yes, I found poetry: Heart Mountain, by Jodi Hottel (Blue Light Press), whose mother’s family was incarcerated at Heart Mountain. Also, We Hereby Refuse: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration, a graphic memoir written by Frank Abe and Tamiko Nimura (Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience), and Unforgotten Voices from Heart Mountain, by Joanne Oppenheim and Nancy Matsumoto, oral histories from people “on both sides of the barbed wire fence.” Put together, they describe varied responses to living in the camps.

While writing this, I remembered a co-worker from years ago who had lived as a child at Manzanar, another camp. Why didn’t I ever broach the topic with her when she was living? These books make me think of her. Perhaps her story is waiting for me to find in another book.

If you want to deepen your understanding of subjects covered in museums or national parks, I recommend visiting their bookstores. Buy a book to extend your experience into the future and widen and deepen your knowledge of the United States and its people.

I stroll in the shadow
of a guard tower
as heat softens to dusk. 
         —from “A Few Seeds” in Heart Mountain by Jodi Hottel