The Red Boots She Wore to Her Concentration Camp

It is an astonishing story, that of what happened at Heart Mountain, Wyoming, the site of a Japanese American Internment Camp.

Toshi was a petite woman of only 20 years old when she and her family were ordered by the American government in 1942 to leave their homes and businesses on the West Coast behind, pack up only "what they could carry" and were transported to a high desert location surrounded by barbed wire, for the rest of World War II.The small red ankle boots were a gift from Toshi's father at the beginning of her journey into womanhood in the wilderness.  She recounted that she wore them as a comfort item. They were donated as a memorial to all the Japanese Americans who survived this "relocation camp" nightmare...and to those that didn't, like Toshi's father.  She returned to Heart Mountain on the 69th anniversary and dedication of an interpretive center opening last August 2011.

That's where I saw her posing in front of a life-size image of her wearing these red boots, cameras and video cameras documenting the poignant moment.  Her two grown children and many friends and relatives were wandering slowly through the exhibits, pointing at memorabilia and making comments about "I remember that..."

Toshiko Ito posed in front of a bigger than life-size photo of herself at the age of 20 when she and her birth family entered the relocation camp. Today she is 88 years old.

On February 19, 1942, in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor by Imperial Japan, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the mass removal of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast to so-called "relocation centers."

Concerns about the loyalty of ethnic Japanese were the result of racial prejudice and wartime hysteria.  By the end of the war, 10 people were convicted of spying for Japan; all were Caucasian.

Toshi married Jim Ito, and raised two children, Christie and Lance.  Lance is a Superior Court judge in Los Angeles who came to national prominence when he presided over the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

Lance and my husband - compatriots in justice.  But has justice been served? Did O.J. Simpson's wife Nicole Brown Simpson get justice?  Did Toshi's family get justice?  What is required to be considered justice?

Heart Mountain was one of 10 "relocation centers" for Japanese and Japanese Americans run by the War Relocation Authority (WRA).  In addition to these, Japanese Americans were confined at times in temporary assembly centers, Justice Dept. internment camps and other wartime prison facilities.

Hurriedly constructed by more than 2,000 workers starting in June 1942, the center consisted of 740 acres enclosed by barbed wire fencing, with 650 barracks-style buildings, including a hospital, other support facilities and 468 residential structures.  The total number of people incarcerated for any period of time at Heart Mountain was 13,997.  Heart Mountain gets its name from the heart-shaped mountain seen in the background.

Upon release of internees after the war in 1945, many families returned to their homes and businesses and found them occupied by strangers, vandalized - properties stolen, with no recourse.

The redress movement of the 1970s resulted in a congressional commission formed in 1980, which issued the 1983 report "Personal Justice Denied" recommending token redress payments to victims and declaring internment "unjustly motivated by racism rather than real military necessity."  

The Civil Liberties Act was signed into law in 1988, implementing the recommendations of a congressional commission, and was sponsored by Representative Norman Mineta and Senator Alan K Simpson - who met as Boy Scouts at Heart Mountain when Mineta's family was incarcerated there. 
An irony was demonstrated here when more than 800 Japanese Americans from Heart Mountain internment camp served in the military, 11 of whom were killed and 52 wounded in battle, for the American side.  Some were volunteers, others were drafted.  The draft generated a resistance movement at Heart Mountain.  A "Fair Play Committee" formed to protest military induction, when recruits were forced at the same time into internment camps, and, as a result, 85 internees were elsewhere imprisoned for draft law violations!

The question of justice was on my mind as I wandered through the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation Interpretive Learning Center, just an hour's drive from my home over the border in Montana.  With all these elderly survivors who surrounded me, I felt the overwhelming need to apologize.  Why?  I didn't have responsibility for their internment. Did my parents?
No, on a personal basis, it doesn't make much sense.  But, as fellow Americans, we acknowledge a grave injustice has happened.  Wartime makes people do awful things.  Being a witness to these survivors at this grand opening at Heart Mountain was just that - a grand mountain-size opening - of the heart. To read more on this chapter of American history click on this link to go to: www.heartmountain.org