| Original caption: “Heart Mountain Relocation Center, Heart Mountain, Wyoming. A volunteer worker of Japanese ancestry unloading coal from a box car. Says this former California resident working in sub zero weather, ‘It isn’t the penny ante wages, its just that someone had to do it to keep the people comfortable, and if I can help I am willing.’” While this is largely subjective, it seems pretty clear that Heart Mountain had the most severe climate of any of the War Relocation Authority (WRA) camps. There are some statistical measures that would support this. It was both the further north and at the highest elevation of any of the WRA camps. It had the lowest mean temperature (46 degrees Fahrenheit, 8 degrees Celsius), widest annual temperature range (50 degrees Fahrenheit, 10 degrees Celsius), and the shortest growing season (80 days). The lowest recorded temperature was minus 28 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 33 degrees Celsius on the night of January 18-19, 1943, part of an 11-day span during which it reached at least minus 9 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 22 degrees Celsius) on 10 of those days. The inmate population, which came mostly from the Los Angeles and San Jose areas, was not used to this kind of weather, though, really no 1 from the West Coast exclusion zone save for perhaps those from Alaska would have been. Inmates recalled their wet hair freezing into place while walking from the shower to their barrack. “It was terrible,” remembered Arthur F. Okuno (September 15, 1921 – November 25, 2020) in a 2009 interview. “In the first winter there it was like below, thirty below zero, and we’re not used to that winter. They gave us World War I peacoats and gloves, and we had to buy our earmuffs and cap, but it was hard.” Hal Keimi (born October 23, 1931) recalled kids swinging their towels in the air on the way back from the shower to see them frozen stiff by the time they got back. Given the cold climate, the coal supply and the inmate labor needed to provide it became an issue throughout the life of the camp. Though stoves were installed when inmates arrived, there was initially an insufficient supply of coal, which, along with the lack of insulation, made for a rude introduction to the camp for the inmate population that came almost entirely from California. When the coal trains rolled in, crowds of evacuees rushed down to the tracks, filling every conceivable container with the precious fuel, and then returned to their houses, hoarding the treasure in closets and under beds. A distribution system was eventually devised that saw coal delivered to each block, where it would be deposited into a pile. Inmates would race to the pile to scoop up the larger pieces. “If you didn’t get out early enough, get up when the coal truck came and carried some coal, you’d have to go and get the… the crumbs of the coal,” recalled Ted Hamachi (born May 26, 1927). “It’s all loose and it’s real hard to put in.” If you were late, “There would be nothing left except little tiny bits,” wrote Nellie Yae Sumiye Nakamura (December 20, 1902 – June 14, 2010). As with other camps that relied on coal for heating, finding enough inmate workers willing to do the physically taxing and dirty work of unloading the coal cars as they arrived by train for the meager WRA wages proved to be a challenge throughout. During the 1st winter of 1942-43, the administration leveraged the fact that Californians were terrified at prospect of Wyoming winters, to secure enough workers. Later, block chairmen took turns unloading coal to insure that there would be sufficient supply. The arrival of over 1,300 inmates from Tule Lake temporarily eased the labor shortages in the fall of 1943, as the newcomers took coal jobs at least for a time. But in the fall of 1944, the coal situation came to a head, as inmate workers refused to unload the coal cars, leading to the inability to produce hot water in Blocks 31 for 3 days at the end of September. As Community Analyst Asael T. Hansen (November 21, 1903 – March 5, 1991) observed, there would be no Tule Lake arrivals to save them this time. The impasse was finally broken by groups of “volunteers” from each block—some 300 in total—who gathered on October 8 to unload 20 cars of coal. Later, a plan to rotate workers from other departments to unload coal led to enough being unloaded to get them through their final winter at Heart Mountain. Photo by Thomas “Tom” W. Parker (July 24, 1907 – January 20, 1976), Director of the War Relocation Authority’s Photographic Section (WRAPS). Although it is clear that Parker thought the point of view expressed in his films was progressive, the narratives feature hopelessly uncritical, idealistic renditions of the WRA’s perspective on the mass removal, incarceration, and resettlement of Japanese Americans during World War II. In this sense, they are useful for their footage, and useful to illustrate the worst elements of paternalism and condescension toward Japanese Americans who were subject to the WRA’s management ideology. | |
| Image Filename | wwii1710.jpg |
| Image Size | 475.09 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2916 x 2946 |
| Photographer | Thomas “Tom” W. Parker |
| Photographer Title | War Relocation Authority’s Photographic Section (WRAPS) |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | January 6, 1943 |
| Location | |
| City | Heart Mountain |
| State or Province | Wyoming |
| Country | United States |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | NWDNS-210-G-E687 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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