Heart Mountain Through the Eyes of Yoshio Okumoto

One of those people was Yoshio Okumoto. Born in 1903 to parents who had immigrated from Japan to Hawaii and one of eight siblings, Okumoto moved to California in 1925 to study pre-med at Stanford University.

Okumoto was still at Stanford, working as a Research Assistant in the Anatomy Department, when President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066-- the order that allowed for the exclusion of Japanese Americans from the West Coast-- on February 19, 1942.

In May of that year, Okumoto, along with 39 students and one professor, was forced to comply with the mandatory exclusion orders and sent first to Santa Anita Assembly Center. He was later transferred to Heart Mountain, where he arrived on September 10, 1942. 

A bachelor at the time of his arrival, Okumoto was assigned a spot in barrack 29-5-B, which he split with two other bachelors. 

It is unknown when Okumoto began to express an interest in photography. It is possible that he learned from one of his roommates, James Yonemura, who had been a professional photographer in Los Angeles.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, many people baselessly feared that all Japanese Americans were spies. Acting on that paranoia, the government mandated that Japanese Americans surrender certain items that could be used for espionage; namely cameras, radios, and firearms.

Yonemura complied with the order and surrendered his cameras and equipment. In late 1942 the restrictions on photography were lifted and Yonemura was able to request the return of his equipment. As early as March 1943 Yonemura and Okumoto were documenting life in camp

The Japanese American community as a whole in 1942 fell into two main generational groups.

The first consisted of the Issei who had immigrated from Japan.

The second were the Nisei children of the Issei who had been born in the United States. Okumoto was an older Nisei.

The bitterly cold winters of Wyoming were a shock to the people of Heart Mountain who mostly came from southern California. However, that also offered the opportunity for new experiences, such as ice skating.

Incarcerated Japanese Americans created ice rinks like this one by digging a shallow pond in an empty block, then flooding and letting it freeze. Skates were usually bought from mail-order catalogs like Sears and Montgomery Ward.

Not everyone sent to Heart Mountain stayed for all three years the camp was open. Beginning in 1943, people were permitted to leave camp and move anywhere in the United States except for the west coast.

In order to leave camp a person had to have a definite place to go. Some young Nisei, for example, were able to leave camp in order to attend college in the midwest. Many more people found jobs, often in war critical industries, and were able to leave camp to take those jobs.

With the assistance of a Stanford professor, Yoshio Okumoto left Heart Mountain on January 16, 1945 to return to California, he was one of the earliest Nisei able to return home where he resumed his old job in the Anatomy Department.

In 1953 Okumoto was listed as a contributor in an article entitled “The physical growth and development of children who survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima or Nagasaki” which was published in the Journal of Pediatrics.