Sam Mihara speaks at a post-lecture reception.
It’s more important than ever to tell the history of the incarceration of 125,000 Japanese Americans during World War II, Heart Mountain board member Sam Mihara told a national audience during the 51st Jefferson Lecture for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) on Feb. 26.
Mihara, who was forced with his family from his home in San Francisco and into the War Relocation Authority camp at Heart Mountain, Wyo., said human rights abuses such as the Japanese American incarceration could happen again if there is a toxic combination of hatred, hysteria and weak leadership.
“I simply say never again to anyone at all,” Mihara said at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) in Los Angeles.
Mihara gave the lecture before a select group of invitees after the Los Angeles wildfires forced the talk to be moved from its original date of Jan. 15. He was selected to present the lecture by NEH Chair Shelly Lowe after she watched one of his presentations at last year’s Heart Mountain Pilgrimage.
Mihara was introduced by Heart Mountain Chair Shirley Ann Higuchi and Ann Burroughs, JANM president and CEO, who is also a Heart Mountain board member.
Higuchi commended Mihara’s dedication to sharing the history of the incarceration to more than 100,000 people in presentations around the county over the last 15 years. Her mother, Setsuko Saito Higuchi, and Mihara knew each other as children in San Francisco before the war.
Burroughs called Mihara “a man whose life’s work embodies the very essence of the humanities.”
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, a Smithsonian affiliate, preserves the site where some 14,000 Japanese Americans were unjustly incarcerated in Wyoming from 1942 through 1945. Their stories are told within the foundation’s museum, Heart Mountain Interpretive Center, located between Cody and Powell.
For more information, call the center at (307) 754-8000 or email [email protected].