Sam Mihara - Memories of Heart Mountain

Japanese American imprisonment/civil rights abuses of WWll

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed “Executive Order 9066” on February 19, 1942, which authorized the military to remove Japanese Americans from their homes.

In 1942, when Sam Mihara was 9 years old, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II. Shortly after, Sam and his family were forced from their San Francisco home by armed military guards and sent to the Heart Mountain prison camp in Wyoming. The government decided to remove all people of Japanese ancestry and place them into desolate prison camps. They would live crowded into a single 20 x 20 square foot room for the next 3 years.