Hana Maruyama, a history professor at the University of Connecticut, was the host for the history department’s “Wednesday Workshops” on Wednesday, Dec. 4. The original title of her presentation, “The Land Is Fenced: The Role of Japanese American Incarcerated Labor in the Formation of Settler Property on Indigenous Lands,” shifted to a more geared focus on the settlement of the West, and more specifically, the region of Wyoming known as Heart Mountain. In her presentation, Maruyama explored the interrelatedness between the exploitation of Japanese Americans and of Indigenous people as a consequence of Western settlement in the United States.
Maruyama’s research is primarily on Japanese American incarceration in the context of U.S. settler colonialism, typically through oral accounts. Her main methodology for conducting research for this presentation resided in archival records and oral history but was also extended by attending related events throughout her career, as well as working an internship at an American Indian reservation. However, her interest in Heart Mountain was sparked by her family’s roots and a trip she had taken to Wyoming when she was just 12 years old, the same age her grandmother had been when she was removed from her home by the government.
Upon discovering an abandoned internment camp with her family, Maruyama noticed a plated sign describing it as a government entity, while a mark of graffiti labeled it as a concentration camp. At this moment, Maruyama realized, “Graffiti can tell us history, while the bronze plaques tell us lies.” This personal anecdote stresses the importance of firsthand encounters when retelling history, rather than accepting the watered-down recounts of events often given in textbooks.
The main takeaway of the event was the degradation of native lands for the benefit of specifically white settlers, as it was marked in an accounted conversion with former President Eisenhower during his time in office. During World War II, Japanese Americans had been forced out of their homes to live in work camps. Initially, these people were asked to settle inland, but when the political powers of Western states put up a fight, it was mandatory not only for these people to move, but to undergo unpaid labor for the benefit of the state.
Although, at the same time, extreme precautions were taken by the government to ensure that there would be no disturbances to white settlers in the areas of these camps at this time. Maruyama provided a letter written by a white woman to former President Franklin D. Roosevelt expressing concerns about her family’s nearby settlement. After receiving this letter, a private road was created through the internment camp for the family to pass through, and they were granted permits to be on the premises at any time they needed. Simultaneously, the land that Indigenous people once knew to be their home was disappearing.
At this time in history, the War Relocation Authority (WRA) was looking for “moveable, excludable, alienable labor,” explained Maruyama. The government found this in the Japanese people, who were easy to target during wartime and due to speculation of disloyalty to the country. Japanese Americans were being forced to irrigate the lands that once belonged to Indigenous peoples under the strict regulation by the WRA to not relocate white settlers during this process, to whitewash American society.
Still, these attempts began much before World War II. “Buffalo Bill,” also known as William F. Cody, largely contributed to the settlement of Cody, Wyoming, a town not far from Heart Mountain. Buffalo Bill had built the Shoshone Dam, seeing this as his way of opening the country for the white man. Congress also funded irrigation and infrastructure for dams, which contributed heavily to this opening of the land for settlers.
Jumping to the late 1940s and early 1950s, after the war ended and the Japanese concentration camps began to shut down, Japanese Americans were not welcomed to the West, once again proving the irrigation systems were put into place solely for the benefit of white Americans. The people impacted by these actions are survivors and are the true source of history.
Maruyama explained that her Japanese roots drew her to learn more about this topic and that her connection to history empowered her to complete this project. However, in acknowledging the coexisting Indigenous history of the land, Maruyama shared that she received training in graduate school to prevent harm to the community while completing this work.
Closing her presentation, Maruyama shared that in the place by Heart Mountain where an oppressive camp was once located, now stands a museum of history, which is simply one step in the right direction for preventing the horrors of the past from continuing into today.