Wyoming

Bomber Mountain's Namesake Tragedy

June 1943 saw forty-one heavy bombers lost within the continental United States, including a B-17 that went missing over Wyoming late during the night of June 28. That aircraft had ten young men on board destined for World War II. They had been ordered overseas to participate in the intense and constant bombing raids being conducted in Europe, but they never made it out of America. Two years later, area cowboys discovered the wreckage strewn across an otherwise picturesque landscape. U.S. Air Corps Captain Kenneth G. Hamm noted in his personal diary, “The plane was so completely demolished that we were almost on top of it before we saw it.” Author Sylvia A. Bruner shares the stories of the men who lost their lives deep in the Bighorn Mountains and recounts the events of the crash, search and U.S. Air Corps accident investigation.

“I was given the choice to join the German army or get shot!” –German prisoner of war at Camp Deaver, 1944

Wyoming's nineteen prisoner of war camps held several thousand incarcerated Italian and German prisoners during World War II. Historical records, photographs and personal stories shared by camp residents reveal details about this little-known part of the state's history. Local agricultural and timber industries utilized POW labor, while positive relationships developed between the camp's civilian area residents and prisoners.

Author Cheryl O’Brien recounts the experiences of the prisoners and the intriguing story of how U.S. military personnel, prisoners and residents-in spite of their differences-collaborated to cope with the challenges of life in a POW camp.

More than 14,000 people of Japanese descent—two-thirds of them US citizens—were exiled from August 1942 to November 1945 to the Heart Mountain Incarceration Site on the high desert prairie of Wyoming’s Big Horn Basin.

The site was the temporary home for Japanese Americans forced from their homes in California, Oregon, and Washington. Believed to be saboteurs or spies or both, the prisoners were viewed with fear, hatred, and sometimes acceptance by their neighbors in nearby Cody and Powell. During their time at Heart Mountain, the incarcerated people lived like the residents of any American city. Under the eye of the federal War Relocation Authority, they taught school, worked at the fire and police departments, ran stores and barbershops, and spent much of their time wondering what had happened to their former lives. Today, the site is part of the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center and Mineta-Simpson Institute.

Ray Locker is the director of communications and strategy for the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation. The foundation’s staff consists of experts on Japanese American history, the intersections between Wyoming’s Indigenous community and World War II’s incarcerated people, and museum professionals dedicated to telling the story of this sad chapter of American history. They used donations from those incarcerated and their families, collections in the foundation archives, the National Archives, the Library of Congress, and museums from around the country.

The History within a National Landmark

Prior to Wyoming becoming the forty-fourth state in the Union on July 10, 1890, the territorial legislature passed a bill authorizing the construction of a capitol at a maximum cost of $150,000. Governor Warren signed the bill on March 4, 1886, and appointed the Capitol Building Commission, which purchased a site on Hill Street, now Capitol Avenue, at a cost of $13,100. Many changes have occurred since the 1887 laying of the cornerstone. Recent renovations upgraded the capitol’s Classical style and striking gold-leaf dome. The most important room, where women’s right to vote began, has been restored to its original grandeur.

Authors Starley Talbott and Linda Graves Fabian celebrate these and other historic firsts in this history of the state capitol building.

Immigration in the Equality State

Long before Heart Mountain Internment Camp brought Japanese prisoners to Wyoming, an immigrant work force put down lasting roots. Beginning in 1892, Japanese came to toil on Union Pacific’s railroad and coal mines. But they weren’t warmly welcomed. Newspapers charged every Japanese section worker was secret Japanese Army. Allegedly, 600 Japs in Utah, [and] about 400 in Wyoming and probably 100 in Colorado, were ready to serve Japan during the Japanese Russo War. George Wakimoto said the number was closer to six. Such misinformation about Japanese laborers spawned violence against Asians. The citizens of Evanston tried to blow them up. Rawlins ran the Japanese out of town. And in Laramie, young boys threw stones and dragged a Japanese man through the street. Author Dan Lyon chronicles Japanese perseverance, before and after both world wars, in their adopted state.

Wyoming History Enshrined/Created in 1871, Lakeview Cemetery serves as a repository of local and state history. Resting in the historic grounds are eleven of Wyoming’s governors, including the first woman governor in the nation. Other hallowed, eternal residents include a wild west showman, the namesake of a military base, and a famed photographer of the west. Suffragists, Japanese railroad workers, and a young range war victim are buried here too. Authors Starley Talbott and Michael Kassel explore the rich past of the famous and not-so famous citizens of Lakeview Cemetery.