By Randall Yip, Executive Editor
Michael McDaniel Jr has spent nearly 40 years living in Wyoming. Growing up, he heard people often refer to the Heart Mountain Incarceration Camp as a J*p camp.
It didn’t surprise him when he heard that an elected state official had referred to the Heart Mountain by that same racist three letter name used to refer to Japanese during WWII.
“Not at all surprised,” he told AsAmNews in a phone interview. “I haven’t heard people directly call it that in a while, but that’s just because I hang out with a group of people that are… more culturally aware, I suppose.”
Wyoming’s Joint Agriculture, State and Public Lands & Water Resources visited the interpretive center on Tuesday. Just prior to the visit, State Rep. John Winter (R-Big Horn) said in a statement recorded during a live stream of the committee’s meeting at 3:35:28.
“If we’re going to go to the J*p camp. That’s what I call it,” Winter said while snickering. Two other legislators appeared to chuckle with him while fellow Republican Sen. Tim French (R-Cody) lowered his head in disgust. “We need to leave here by about 12:30.”
Sen French then told the story of his family’s connection to the property at Heart Mountain and “encouraged everybody to come to this. It’s very informative. At one time it was Wyoming’s third largest city,” he said.
AsAmNews reached out to Winter twice by phone and twice by email today but have not heard back.
McDaniel, who serves as the Center’s Membership director, said he was not aware of Winter’s comment until after the visit by the committee. However, he said he heard one committee member refer to Native Americans in a derogatory manner and said Winter and some other members of the committee didn’t seem too engaged during their visit.
“Several of the representatives and senators seemed dismissive,” McDaniel said about their visit. “Being in a place like this all the time, you can kind of tell who wants to be here to learn, and who’s forced to be here out of some sort of obligation.”
The Japanese Americans at Heart Mountain served an important role in agriculture and irrigation-something he said would be important for an agriculture and water resources committee to learn. Committee members received a tour of the area and of the underground cellars used to preserve food.
McDaniel said Heart Mountain was known for growing a lot of food and distributing it in a short amount of time to other incarceration camps during the war.
He believes what happened during their visit was a sign of the times.
“People feel more comfortable being racist like that,” he said. “I wish that people would come here, learn and understand, and then maybe reflect on what happened and transfer that into what’s happening in contemporary (times). But I can tell that’s a difficult task, being some people are still living in 1942, as far as their thought processes go.”
