Perhaps no where can you get a better sense of the incarceration experience for Japanese American than at the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center. It’s one of only two museums at the ten camps erected for 120,000 Japanese American prisoners during World War II, according to the LA Times.
The other is at Manzanar, but only Heart Mountain has original buildings that allow visitors to come closer to the experience of life in incarceration. The camp was intended to hold 10,000 people, but ending up crowding in 14,000 over three years.
Travel writer Diana Lambdin Meyer of the LA Times describes the Heart Mountain Interpretive Learning Center as ugly and depressing. Lambdin reports that the barracks were so quickly assembled that winds in subzero temperatures blew through the cracks of the building.
The Interpretive Center opened in 2011. You can get a good idea of what a visit would be like by reading the LA Times.
