From right: HMWF Chair Shirley Ann Higuchi, Sen. John Barrasso, and HMWF Vice Chair Douglas Nelson.
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation (HMWF) praised Congress for passing the 2023 spending bill that includes the Norman Y. Mineta Japanese American Confinement Education Act and the Japanese American History Network Act, which together will further education about one of the nation’s civil rights abuses.
Named after the late Norman Mineta, the Norman Y. Mineta Japanese American Confinement Education Act dedicates $80 million in future funding for the preservation of sites where Japanese Americans were held without legal due process, and education about their unjust incarceration.
The Japanese American History Network Act authorizes the National Park Service to “coordinate federal and nonfederal activities that commemorate, honor, and interpret the history of Japanese Americans during World War II,” according to the Senate report on the bill.
The Mineta act also provides $10 million in grants to qualifying institutions for educational programs about the Japanese American incarceration in which more than 120,000 people, two-thirds of them U.S. citizens, were imprisoned in a series of concentration camps around the country, including at Heart Mountain, Wyoming.