Announcing the 2024 publication of Heart Mountain Chronicles: The History of a Japanese Relocation Center

by Bernard Murphy and James Murphy

Heart Mountain Chronicles is a meticulously researched history of one of the ten prison camps built by the Government in the summer of 1942 to incarcerate persons of Japanese ancestry living along the West Coast after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The Center, located between the towns of Cody and Powell in northern Wyoming, was built in 60 days (June 10 to August 12, 1942) to imprison 11,000 persons of Japanese ancestry living along the West Coast when Pearl Harbor was attacked. The book tells who built the Center, where the blueprints came from, how the infrastructure was built and managed, who governed the Center, how the prisoners organized their new community, grew their own food, built a hospital and schools, and then, what happened to the Center after the war was over.

While others have written the stories of the people who were interned in the Heart Mountain Relocation Center, the authors tell the story of the place, itself.

The author, Ben Murphy, said about this work, “I guess I wrote it for me. I wanted to know how that unusual place I spent some of my growing-up years came to be. Where did it come from? Why was it there? Who decided it had to exist? Who planted it between Cody and Powell? Who designed it, who built it, who ran the place. Who were these people that were imprisoned? What did they do all day while locked up? And where did its prisoners come from and where did they go? Hopefully, in answering my own questions I will have been able to answer others’ questions about this dreadful place.”

Available April 2024