One of the many inspiring events at the 2024 Heart Mountain Pilgrimage in Cody and Powell, Wyoming was the introduction of a truly engaging graphic novel titled From Barbed Wire to Washington: The Remarkable Friendship of Norman Mineta and Alan Simpson (Mineta, Simpson, Higuchi, Locker, Johnston).
This entertaining piece begins with Norm Minetta as a young Boy Scout inside the Heart Mountain prison camp. His isolated troop invites local Boy Scout troops in the Wyoming region to come to the camp and join in for a Jamboree where they would come together to tie knots, construct tents, and work on merit badges. No troop accepts the invitation — except for one troop from Cody, Wyoming.
The adult leader of this one troop knows that the Boy Scouts in the camp pledge allegiance to the same flag and share the same boy scout oath along with the same salute. Upon entering the camp, the visiting scouts, fearful at first, are each paired up with an incarcerated Boy Scout.
A tall Alan Simpson pairs up with Norm Minetta. They get along fabulously. Little do they know that they will meet up again years later as politicians, one being conservative and the other liberal. They will join hands across the aisle and pass significant valuable legislation that affects the whole country.
Fast forward to today: the Minetta-Simpson Institute was inaugurated recently at the Heart Mountain Pilgrimage. This institute aspires to carry on the collaborative spirit of Norm Mineta and Alan Simpson to find a way forward during these polarized times. The belief is that America is strongest when all sides work together.
At the institute’s inauguration, Debra Kawahara, Ph.D., President-elect of the American Psychological Association, extolled the cooperative values of speaking honestly, being respectful, sharing emotions, listening to the other side with empathy, and being vulnerable.
Another inspiring event at the Heart Mountain Pilgrimage was personal storytelling by Apsáalooke Nation (Crow) and Japanese American young people. They shared their Heart Mountain connections, similarities, and contrasts through video clips amplified by their speaking directly to each other and to the engaged audience. Much later that evening they sang karaoke together.
During the Pilgrimage’s second morning there was an emotionally moving performance by four women: actress Tamlyn Tomita, theater artist Mika Dyo, filmmaker Vanessa Yuille, and theater performer Maggie Simpson-Crabaugh. Speaking solely in the first-person, based on verbatim excerpts taken from primary-sourced oral histories and interviews, they gave voice to women taken from the trajectory of Japanese American history. This presentation style made for compelling listening to the personal experiences of imprisoned Japanese American women but also of their non-Japanese white counterparts who reacted in their own way to what was a monumental violation of civil rights. The audience reacted with a prolonged standing ovation.
Other inspiring events are too numerous to mention but include the tour of a camp root cellar (the length of a football field) and a hands-on taiko drumming workshop where the audience participants were taught the artistic and spiritual values of attitude, posture, and energy flow.
