Takashi Hoshizaki and Shirley Ann Higuchi.
Dr. Takashi Hoshizaki, a former Heart Mountain incarceree who recently turned 100 years old, and Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation Board Chair Shirley Ann Higuchi have received commendations from the Japanese government for their work promoting stronger U.S.-Japan ties.
Hoshizaki was named the recipient of the Order of the Rising Sun, Silver Rays, for his work “improving the status of the Japanese American community and promoting mutual understanding between Japan and the United States.”
The sole surviving resister of the military draft during his incarceration at Heart Mountain, Hoshizaki later served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War. He was pardoned by President Harry Truman on Dec. 24, 1947, and became an eminent botanist whose research into circadian rhythms took him to Antarctica and a career at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
He is the fifth former Heart Mountain incarceree to receive the Order of the Rising Sun. Previous recipients include Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, Judge Raymond Uno, JACL leader Jeanette Misaka, and pharmaceutical scientist William I. Higuchi, Shirley Ann Higuchi’s late father. Other prominent recipients include the late Sen. Daniel Inouye and actor-director Clint Eastwood.
Higuchi received a commendation from Japanese Ambassador to the U.S. Shigeo Yamada for her leadership in the Washington, D.C., legal community, including her current presidency of the Bar Association of the District of Columbia. Higuchi was also the president of the D.C. Bar in 2003 and 2004.
“In addition to her distinguished legal career, she has made outstanding contributions to the preservation of Japanese American history and the protection of their civil rights, thereby promoting mutual understanding between Japan and the United States,” the commendation for Higuchi said.
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, a Smithsonian affiliate, preserves the site where some 14,000 Japanese Americans were unjustly incarcerated in Wyoming from 1942 through 1945. Their stories are told within the foundation’s museum, Heart Mountain Interpretive Center, and its affiliated Mineta-Simpson Institute located between Cody and Powell.
For more information, call the center at (307) 754-8000 or email info@heartmountain.org.
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