Shirley Ann Higuchi, chair of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation; Deni Mineta, wife of the late Norman Mineta; former U.S. Rep. Mike Honda; and Douglas Nelson, vice chair of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, stand with the statue of Mineta at the San Jose Mineta International Airport in January.
POWELL, Wyo. — The Mineta-Simpson Institute, dedicated to preserving the ideals of Secretary Norman Mineta and Sen. Alan Simpson, will open this weekend during the annual Heart Mountain Pilgrimage.
The pilgrimage opened Thursday with tours of the interpretive center and other facilities at the site of the incarceration camp that held 14,000 Japanese Americans between August 1942 and November 1945.
A panel featuring Shelly Lowe, chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities; Anthea Hartig, director of the National Museum of American History; Debra Kawahara, president-elect of the American Psychological Association; and Ann Burroughs, president and CEO of the Japanese American National Museum, will open the Institute’s new conference center at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 27.
Speakers will include former Rep. Mike Honda (D-San Jose), Lowe, Hartig and Burroughs. Actor/activist Tamlyn Tomita, a Heart Mountain descendant, will lead a performance of the play “Question 27, Question 28” during the pilgrimage’s session on Friday morning.
Mineta, who was incarcerated at Heart Mountain, and Simpson first met in 1943 when their Boy Scout troops worked together. Their lifelong friendship continued when they served in Congress. Mineta, a Democrat, was a member of the House of Representatives from 1975 to 1995; Simpson, a Republican, was a senator from 1979 to 1997. Both also served on the Smithsonian Institution Board of Regents.
Former Sen. Alan Simpson and former Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta (1931-2022) met at a Boy Scout jamboree at Heart Mountain in 1943 and later served together in Congress.
The pilgrimage schedule can be found online at www.heartmountain.org/visit/events/pilgrimage/
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, a Smithsonian affiliate, preserves the wartime confinement site in Wyoming. The incarcerees’ 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 info@heartmountain.org.