Something people may not know about me is that I am a movie buff. I like both kinds of flicks – black and white westerns and color westerns.
The biggest movie star of all time was once the grand marshal of our Cody Stampede/July 4 parade. That’s right, John Wayne/Rooster Cogburn/George Washington McClintock/Hondo Lane came to our town. The man who shot Liberty Valance (spoiler alert, it wasn’t James Stewart) stood up in the back of a convertible and made us feel like we were his best friends.
Yes, John Wayne was our parade marshal in 1976.
We’ve also been fortunate to have the Sundance Kid/Jeremiah Johnson join us as Robert Redford was a pall bearer for the original Jeremiah “Liver Eating” Johnston who is interred at our own Old Trail Town.
Clint Eastwood visited Cody in 2002 and walked through the Cody Firearms Museum and I caught Robert Duvall enjoying a performance of Dan Miller’s Cowboy Music Revue a few years ago. An invitation is always open to any western “hero” to visit in Cody – and me.
While my taste in movies pretty much begins and ends with wide open vistas, cowboys and horses, I do have plans this summer to take in a topic that will be emotional and force me to face some of our history that many people would like to bury.
Heart Mountain WW II Interpretive Center on the highway between Cody and Powell, will host its annual Heart Mountain Pilgrimage July 26-28. The weekend event includes an array of educational sessions, multigenerational discussions and other activities as well as a keynote speech by David Inoue, executive director of the Japanese American Citizens League.
The visitor center at the Heart Interpretive Center was built to resemble original barracks.
In addition to workshops, musical entertainment, and art exhibits, there will be a film screening in Cody of Sharon Yamato’s “Moving Walls,” which explores what happened to the barracks that housed more than 14,000 prisoners. When tens of thousands of our fellow citizens were forced into various camps throughout the West, their first order of business was to construct these long narrow barracks that became their homes for the duration of WWII.
Exhibits demonstrate life in the barracks.
After the war ended, most of these people headed home – mostly to California – and left behind these structures. The government made the barracks available to anyone willing to haul them away with several being sold to homesteading farmers for $1. Many are still found in the area, and whenever I am showing my guests the area I point out one being used as a barn just outside on town the way to Yellowstone’s northeast gate.
To me the barracks have always been a reminder of how President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, forcing the imprisonment of 120,000 American citizens of Japanese ancestry after the Pearl Harbor attack and subsequent declaration of war.
I am so looking forward to getting out of my comfort zone and seeing this film. I applaud Sharon Yamato for her creativity and vision to tackle this subject from this particular perspective.
If you care to join me for this screening and to learn more about the event, visit the Heart Mountain Pilgrimage website.
Until next week, I am lovin’ life – and doing my best John Wayne impersonation – in Cody, Wyo.
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