Employees watch a screening of the Emmy Award-winning documentary “The Legacy of Heart Mountain” May 13 as part of NAVAIR’s Asian-American Pacific Islander Heritage Month event. (U.S. Navy photo)
Patuxent River, MD — In times of great crisis, do we still fall into the trap of judging people by the way they look or where they are from?
That’s one of the questions the Emmy Award-winning documentary “The Legacy of Heart Mountain,” tries to answer. The film, shown here May 13 to more than 300 employees, was part of NAVAIR’s Asian-American Pacific Islander Heritage Month events.
“Heart Mountain” is a story about the Heart Mountain internment camp near Cody, Wyoming. During World War II, 10,000 Japanese-Americans were imprisoned there, leaving behind their jobs and property, after the 1942 attack on Pearl Harbor.
It’s a story rarely told in American classrooms and history textbooks, said David Ono, the documentary’s co-producer and a co-anchor of ABC7 Eyewitness News in Los Angeles.
“The lessons we get from racial profiling and hate are lessons we can still see today,” he said. “These stories resonate today; they go on forever.”
One story is that of Shirley Ann Higuchi, chair of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, whose parents were imprisoned at Heart Mountain. She is featured in the film and spoke as part of a panel at the base theater after the showing. Higuchi’s parents met at the Heart Mountain high school, reconnecting after their release and eventually getting married. Higuchi honored her late mother’s wishes and worked to establish a permanent museum on the grounds where the internment camp once stood.
“As children and American citizens, my parents were imprisoned without cause and without a trial,” she said.
This year’s Asian-American Pacific Islander Month theme was “Many Cultures, One Voice: Promote Equality and Inclusion.” The speakers reinforced that diversity and inclusion are part of the American experience, and that attacks on civil liberties and personal freedoms, such as those that occurred at Heart Mountain, are not.
“When we are isolated, distant and ignorant of a population that may not look like or speak like us, we are vulnerable to only seeing our differences and ignoring our common interests and destiny,” said Douglas Nelson, vice chair of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation.
Rear Adm. CJ Jaynes, executive champion of NAVAIR’s Asian-American Pacific Islander Diversity Advisory Team, agreed: “All of us need to participate in diversity and inclusion and making ourselves more open to others,” she said. To learn more about NAVAIR’s diversity initiatives, watch the video.
The event was hosted NAVAIR’s Asian-American Pacific Islander Diversity Advisory Team, which seeks to explore and eliminate possible barriers Asian-Americans may experience in moving into senior management. Asians make up approximately 7 percent of the NAVAIR workforce. Of NAVAIR’s 39 Senior Executive Service members, none self-identify as Asian-American.
NAVAIR’s other diversity advisory teams focus on individuals with disabilities, Hispanic engagement, African-Americans and women.