The Eagles of Heart Mountain: A True Story of Football, Incarceration, and Resistance in World War II America

by Bradford Pearson

HIDEO MURATA LIVED alone in a small cottage outside San Luis Obispo, California, and had taken to his adopted country with such fervor that he fought for the American Expeditionary Forces during World War I. At one Fourth of July gala following his return, the Monterey County board of supervisors granted him a “Certificate of Honorary Citizenship.” The piece of paper was Murata’s most prized possession; his friends would joke that he slept with it under his pillow. After hearing the news of Roosevelt’s executive order, Murata visited the Monterey County sheriff, an old friend. Surely this is a mistake, he said. The sheriff informed him that it was not. Seven days after Roosevelt’s signing, Murata checked into the Olson Hotel in Pismo Beach, paying for the room in advance. The next day, the cleaning crew found him dead, a bottle of strychnine next to him, with an embossed certificate in his pocket. Monterey County presents greetings to Hideo Murata: And in testimony of her heartfelt gratitude and appreciation presents this testimonial of her honor and respect for your loyal and splendid service to home and county in the Great World War of 1914–1919. Our flag was assailed and you gallantly took up its defense. You and the other sons of America pledged your all for its protection on land, on sea, in air and down under the sea. The flag, which is without dishonor and has never known defeat, was challenged and defied by its enemies, and with all those fighting freemen of our co...

Colorado governor Ralph Carr, who bounced around the state as a child as his father chased gold, grew up around Chinese immigrants. A conservative, anti–New Deal Republican, he spoke fluent Spanish and socialized with the small issei community in the town of La Jara, refusing to believe the men were used as tools of Japan. He idolized Abraham Lincoln and shared with him the belief that American liberty and democracy were what separated the country from other nations. In a radio address three days after Pearl Harbor, he reminded Coloradans of the country’s heritage. “From every nation of the globe people have come to the United States who sought to live as free men here under our plan of government,” he said. “We cannot test the degree of a man’s affections for his fellow or his devotion to his country by the birthplace of his grandfathers.” Colorado, he said, would open its doors. “If Colorado’s part in the war is to take 100,000 of them, then Colorado will take care of them,” he told the surprised room. Months later as a mob confronted the first trainloads of nikkei to the southeast corner of the state, he challenged the protesters, saying, “If you harm them you must harm me. I was brought up in a small town where I knew the shame and dishonor of race hatred.” Pointing at the men, he added, “I grew to despise it because it threatened the happiness of you, and you, and you.” Voters rewarded him by voting for his opponent, Roosevelt loyalist Edwin C. Johnson, in his run for...

FORTY-EIGHT MILLION YEARS ago, as the inland seas of North America began their retreats to the oceans and crocodiles swam in the warm waters above the Arctic Circle, the earth underneath southern Montana shook and shoved forth a five-hundred-square-mile slab of dolomite and limestone. That piece of carbonate scraped and ground its way twenty-five miles into Wyoming, traveling at more than 100 miles an hour, lurching into its final resting place just thirty minutes later. The cause of the event—the largest surface rockslide in the history of the planet—is still unknown. Most scientists believe a volcanic or steam explosion set the earth in motion, its movement aided by either hydrothermal fluids from a nearby volcano or the creation of a gas from the heating of the limestone. In this second scenario, the gas would have supported the slide in the same way a hoverboard floats over a surface. Over the next 48 million years erosion swept away much of the slide. What was left is an 8,100-foot-tall lump of carbonate unlike any other 8,100-foot lump of carbonate in the world, and it’s the first thing you see when you step off the train in Vocation, Wyoming, a made-up town created to jail eleven thousand human beings. What you see is Heart Mountain, a geological anomaly rising above a human ignominy.