News – Sheridan Media
The Jim Gatchell Memorial Museum in Buffalo, will present a story of injustice when Sam Mirhara, a 90-year-old second-generation Japanese American, born and raised in San Francisco shares his presentation Memories of Imprisonment on Sept. 12.
When World War II broke out, Mihara was only 9 years old. He and his family were relocated to the Heart Mountain prison camp located in northern Wyoming.
Executive Director of the Jim Gatchell Memorial Museum, Sylvia Bruner, told listeners of Sheridan Media’s Public Pulse about the location, now a National Historic Site.
S. Bruner
According to materials sent by Bruner, the program opens with photographs from renowned photographer Dorothea Lange and the Mihara family collection that vividly highlight the hate Mihara’s family and other Japanese Americans experienced just before and after the Dec. 7, 1941, attack. Mihara explains how the decision was made to remove and imprison only Japanese people from the West Coast, and not Germans or Italians. He describes in detail the conditions in the prison camp—from the flimsy barracks where prisoners lived to the security system designed to assure no prisoners escaped. He goes on to talk about how the prisoners were released just before the end of the war.
S. Bruner
Mihara will present his story beginning at 5:30 p.m. Sept. 12, at the Buffalo High School Auditorium. According to Bruner, thanks in large part to the Jim Gatchell Memorial Museum, the Buffalo High School and a grant from Wyoming Humanities, the program is free and open to the public.
S. Bruner
Learn more about Sam Mihara by clicking here. Learn more about the Heart Mountain WWII Japanese American Confinement Site, by clicking here.
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Last modified: August 29, 2023