Heart Mountain is located about 13 miles outside of Cody, Wyoming, off the highway between farms and sagebrush-covered fields, with a mountain featuring two rounded peaks visible on the horizon.

More than 14,000 people lived at Heart Mountain in hastily constructed wooden barracks; the entire community was bounded by a wire fence and guarded by military police, with no chairs, tables, shelves, toilets, or running water in the barracks, and cold winter winds blowing under the floors.

After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government determined people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast were a national security threat; over 100,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry were removed from their Pacific Coast homes to wartime communities like Heart Mountain, mandated by Franklin Roosevelt’s 1942 executive order and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Takashi Hoshizaki was a 16-year-old teenager when he arrived at Heart Mountain; he was later drafted in 1944, refused to report, was arrested, and sentenced to three years in federal prison alongside 62 other Heart Mountain draft resisters; he described camp and prison as similarly restrictive—both had barbed wire, searchlights, and confinement—but prison lacked family.

The recording uses 'incarceration' and 'incarceree'—terms used by the Heart Mountain museum—rejecting euphemisms like 'relocation center' or 'internment camp'; it notes historians and Japanese-American groups have advocated for 'concentration camp' and explains the shift began in the 1970s to more accurately reflect the unconstitutional imprisonment of U.S. citizens.

Shirley learned her mother, Setsuko Saito Higuchi, secretly donated up to $100,000 to the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation and, on her deathbed, designated Heart Mountain as the recipient of her koden (memorial money); incarcerees told Shirley her mother had stood up in San Francisco meetings insisting, 'We're going to build something at this site,' revealing a commitment to remembrance Shirley hadn’t known about.

Children remembered playing, keeping pets like lizards and sparrows, tracing Heart Mountain through barrack windows, and feeling no fear or awareness of social consequences at the time; some recalled cold floors in winter and lack of furniture, while others described it as 'like a vacation' or 'adventure'—though many suppressed trauma or reframed hardship as fun.

In 1991, following a 1988 law signed by President Ronald Reagan, each living former incarceree received a formal U.S. government apology and a $20,000 redress payment; the law acknowledged the forced relocation and incarceration as a grave injustice motivated by racism, war hysteria, and failed political leadership.

The Heart Mountain pilgrimage is an annual gathering part reunion and part witnessing, attended by over 350 people including former incarcerees (mostly in their 80s and 90s), their children and grandchildren, and non-Japanese allies; it began annually at Heart Mountain only a few years after the museum opened in 2011, though Japanese Americans have held pilgrimages to incarceration sites for 50 years elsewhere.

After Heart Mountain closed, some faced hostility upon return: Mitzi Asai Loftus recounted being shunned by childhood friends, yelled at by neighbors like Mrs. Betts—who previously offered milk and cookies—and subjected to racist abuse while walking a mile and a quarter to school daily, illustrating the lasting social trauma beyond incarceration.