Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
They didn’t want to be there. World War II interrupted their lives and their government cheated their families, taking their livelihood, freedom and their property in the process. Families began to arrive by train from the West Coast in the summer of 1942.
The hastily built camp at Heart Mountain in Park County was barely adequate for the 10,000 Japanese Americans who arrived that summer.
The federal government didn’t know what to do with the recent high school graduates in the group so they made them go to high school an additional year. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise for one of the most unique football teams to ever take the field.
The influx of 19-year-old seniors in 1943 made the football team much tougher in the fall with older, stronger players. Blue and white were chosen as the Heart Mountain High colors and the Eagle was chosen as the school mascot.
The outside world of Northern Wyoming was unknown to the camp residents. Many were not even sure where they were. Rumors abounded in camp about the reaction of the local Wyoming residents to the internees.
As is the case with many political institutions, the government was vocally opposed to the internees while the local citizens were more approachable. Rhetoric by elected officials was designed to feed off the supposed patriotic fervor against all things Japanese. The truth with the residents of Wyoming was much different.
School began later in the 1940’s than it does today. Agriculture was the driving force for the late start. The camp was harvesting its first full crop in August and September. Internees were hired by farmers across the Big Horn Basin to bring in the crop. A critical labor shortage created by the war made the internees an asset for Wyoming and Montana grain, beet and potato farmers.
With most of the crop in, football practice started in September. With a school population growing daily there was no shortage of talented players. The older boys in camp made the Eagles a huge team for their day with an average weight over 170 pounds.
Maso “Mas” Ogimachi was a life-long resident of Los Angeles when he and his family were forced to Heart Mountain. He played football for the Eagles and commented in a 2004 interview about playing on the team.
“We were all Japanese, short and strong,” Mas said. “We were a year older too. There is a big difference between a 17 and a 19-year-old player. We handled those Wyoming teams easily. When basketball came around, well, we were Japanese, and every one of those little towns had a 6-4 guy on the team.”
Coach Kawasaki’s Eagles were led by superstar running back Babe Nomura.
Football games were all played at Heart Mountain over the next three seasons. Irrigation water was scarce and field conditions were primitive. The earth was plowed, a disc was pulled over it, then it was rolled flat. The occasional rain packed the earth even harder.
Field conditions were favorable for the Japanese players who were on the average shorter and quicker than their white opponents were.
Conditions were poor but similar to those of surrounding communities. Watering grass was considered un-American and a green field would have only added to the suspicion and gossip associated with camp life from some in the surrounding area.
Worland was a working-class farming town, home to a beet processing plant and a Pepsi-Cola bottling plant. The Warriors were tough when it came to football and wrestling.
The Warriors were led by Jerry Saito, an American of Japanese descent. Saito was a talented halfback and would return to Heart Mountain during basketball. As a Japanese American living outside the exclusion zone on the West Coach, Saito was not forced into a camp, but allowed to live as a regular American, despite racial slurs and sideways glances from people who had known him his entire life.
Seeing a Japanese player on an otherwise white team gave the Eagle players pause. Accounts of the game had the Heart Mountain team hitting Saito with a little extra over the other Worland players.
In a hard-fought defensive struggle, the Eagles prevailed 7-0 over the visitors from Washakie County.
Heart Mountain played two more games. A 25-0 rout of Carbon County, Montana and another defensive struggle in a 6-0 win over Lovell. The Eagles finished the season without yielding a single point.
Every school has at least one star athlete and Babe Nomura was Heart Mountain’s. Strong and quick, Babe was the perfect running back for the triple-threat single-wing offense. At 5’9 and 175 pounds Nomura had the strength to break tackles and possessed breakaway speed.
After graduation in June of 1944 Nomura returned to coach the team in the fall. After Heart Mountain closed, he played for San Jose State University and was selected All-Pacific Coast.
The 1944 season opened just like the 1943 season had with a 7-0 win over Worland. Babe Nomura was still there but as a coach and not a player. The Eagles were smaller, lighter and without the services of a superstar in the backfield.
Games were hard to schedule because of the size of Heart Mountain High. Only Casper and Cheyenne had high schools with comparable student populations.
In the second game the Eagles blew out Hardin Montana 60-0. The Eagles continued with a 32-0 win over Lovell.
In an effort to get more games with local schools a six-man team was formed and played a four game schedule against Byron, Cowley and Lovell. The six-man team yielded only one touchdown the entire season.
Six man is a wide-open game where everyone is eligible to run or catch the ball. It is better suited to the smaller, quicker Japanese players. Unlike the 11-man variety the six-man team played only away games.
Heart Mountain’s invincibility on the football field finally came to an end on November 4, 1944. Casper came to the camp with a huge team led by a 210-pound running back. Several of the Casper players were of Japanese descent so the paradox of freedom determined by geography was in place.
The Eagles gave up three touchdowns; the only ones ever scored against their 11-man team and lost the game 19-13. This was the final 11-man football game played at Heart Mountain.
Only a giant chimney and a few decaying buildings lent evidence that the camp and the high school at Heart Mountain ever existed.
In 1996, a 501 (c) (3) organization, The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation was established. It has evolved into a National Historic Landmark Site.
The interpretive center tells the story of 14,000 people wrongfully incarcerated simply because of their race by the United States.
The story of Heart Mountain is one that should be taken seriously in an age where division by race, class, religion and persuasion is once again rearing it’s hideous head.