History Lessons: Internment at Fort Missoula

The Historical Museum at Fort Missoula is home to the largest intact World War II internment site in the United States. From 1941 to 1944, the U.S. Department of Justice managed two Alien Detention Center barracks at the Fort and imprisoned 1,200 Italian nationals and more than 1,100 Japanese Issei men.

The museum recently opened “Far from Home: An Internee Experience at Fort Missoula,” an immersive exhibit in a restored barracks building on the grounds of the Fort. This week, Commissioner Slotnick sat down with museum director Matt Lautzenheiser, museum director, and Ron Wakimoto, board member of the Friends of the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula, to dive into the history of this site and why the stories of internment are still so prescient today.  

This episode opens with Commissioner Slotnick's remarks from the exhibition opening. Thank you to Dennis Bragg for supplying this audio clip!

• Alien Detention Center Barracks 
• Recording of the grand opening of Far From Home: An Internee Experience at Fort Missoula
• Learn more about Assembly Centers, War Relocation Sites and Alien Detention Centers

Thank you to Missoula's Community Media Resource for podcast recording support!

Transcript

Josh Slotnick: [00:00:00] Thanks a lot, Matt, and thanks to all of you for coming out today on this beautiful day. I'm sure everybody could be somewhere else but that. You chose to come here says a lot, so I'm just going to talk at you for a few minutes. I want to talk first about what happened here and then secondly, why we're doing this. First on the what happened here. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt formally declared war and also wrote an executive order, an executive order based on the 1789 Alien Enemies Act. This act called for the rounding up of people of Japanese descent, and in turning them against their will for an undetermined amount of time for the safety of the United States. The people here at Fort Missoula were mostly men. They were separated. Not mostly. They were entirely men. They were separated from their families. Their wives and children went one place. They came here. And when you walk in here, one of the things that struck me the other day was, well, it's not so bad. It looks pretty nice. Yeah, it looks pretty nice. And it was also a prison for the people that were here. The men that were here, they did not know how long they were going to be here. They did not know if they would ever see their wives and their children again, or if they would ever return to their homes, their businesses and their farms. They were in prison. Their fate was not their own.

Josh Slotnick: [00:01:27] While they were here, they had to meet with a panel of judges for a loyalty hearing. The best case result of the loyalty hearing was what they would be deemed worthy enough to rejoin their wives and children in another internment camp. The worst case scenario would be that they would be held by the US government, and used as human stakes in a trade for Japanese prisoners later. And this was especially bad for these folks because of the essence of their culture at the time, our culture that prized responsibility and conformity and was built upon also shame for not meeting your responsibilities and your obligations. There's an ancient Japanese proverb the nail that stands out gets hammered in these folks we're talking about. These men were new ish. They could be second generation. So new ish immigrants to the United States who did their very best to conform, to not stand out. They learned to speak English and they excelled. They owned businesses and farms of keeping on farms, because a whole large part of this population came from the Pacific Northwest and were fruit and vegetable farmers. These people had excelled as immigrants and made tremendous efforts to conform. And when these men were held here, they internalized this as a failure on their part to meet their responsibilities to conform. They endured personal shame at having lost their homes, their farms, their businesses and their families for whom care for was their primary obligation. So as you walk inside here and see this really nice place.

Josh Slotnick: [00:03:09] Also know that it is home to the saddest of emotions. We can't measure the sadness, the depression, the shame that was in this space. The energy is bad. So why not just close this dark chapter, right? We could just be done with this and move on. Why? Why do we spend this money and all this human effort to create this museum? And when I say dark Chapter, please don't think, oh, it's just the three liberal county commissioners that would call this a dark chapter. I'm quoting the federal government, our government, when I say we apologize. In 1988, Ronald Reagan passed the Civil Liberties Act, where he formally apologized to Japanese-Americans. He said internment and this is a quote, was based on racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a failure of political leadership, and he authorized compensation. Financial compensation for the survivors. So when I say Dark Chapter. It's not me and Dave and Juan. I'm quoting Ronald Reagan. But again, why do this? Maybe Ronald Reagan closed the chapter, paid people off. We can be done now. I want to go a little farther back in history to attempt to make my case why we can never be done, another president wrote. And at the time, he wasn't president when he wrote this. We hold these truths to be self-evident. Self-evident means we don't have to prove them. It's like gravity. They just are. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. That means the rights cannot be taken from them.

Josh Slotnick: [00:04:45] They are of us. These inalienable rights include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These values are transcendent. They went way beyond the person who wrote them. They exist as Guideposts for our country. When I think about American exceptionalism, this is what I think about that. We are built on these transcendent values. And those words were written by a man whose economic life was fueled by chattel slavery. His life partner he held in bondage. And that doesn't lessen those values. In fact, what I'm talking about is not hypocrisy. That's deeply oversimplified. What I'm talking about is the essence of what I would call the American project, which is making those values real in the face of the most base and common of human impulses. The impulse to fear, impulse toward greed and power and roll those three together greed, power, fear. And you get mistakes at the deep cost of others. Like this I'm going to quote one more, one more great American. The arc of history is long, but it tends towards justice. Now that arc doesn't just happen on its own. We can't just stand by and expect ourselves to get better. We get better in terms of justice, in terms of making those ideals real in the world because we work for it. Justice is a practice. You have to do it over and over and you never really get there. Creating a museum space like this allows others to engage in that practice through their visitation and learning the lessons incorporated here.

Josh Slotnick: [00:06:28] That's why we do this, to make that practice of justice possible for the next generation of Missoulians, in the hopes that we don't ever do this sort of thing again. And I know, and we all know, we just might. But keeping places like this and these stories alive stacks the odds towards seeing that arc head towards justice. Thank you.

Josh Slotnick: [00:07:04] Welcome back to the agenda, everybody with the Missoula County Commissioners. I'm Josh Slotnick and I'm solo hosting this week. Dave and Juan are both in leadership positions at the Montana Association of Counties, and they're at a macon meeting. But I am joined by Matt Sennheiser, the director of the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula, and Ron Akimoto, professor emeritus at the University of Montana and friends of the Museum board member. Thanks to both of you guys. Thanks for having us, Josh. Yeah. It's great. So I really wanted to have you guys here because the museum recently opened an exhibit called Far From Home An Internee Experience at Fort Missoula. And I was fortunate enough to be with you guys at the commemoration event. And man, what a great event and a beautiful day. I really wish everybody could be there, given that not everybody could be there. Yes. Can you guys describe why we did such a thing. Why is this happening? Just kind of go off a little bit on the exhibit itself. Why commemorate it? Why have a big public event? Sure.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:08:01] So, Josh, I'll talk a little bit about the process, and it's great. It was a very long process. We actually started all the way back in 2017. And, you know, I was three years into my tenure with the museum at that point, and we just redone the exhibit in our existing brick building. We'd put in an interpretive trail. We'd done a documentary film about the internment camp at Fort Missoula. And maybe through that, there was interest from the DNRC in a building that they had on the ground. So on Spurgeon Road, maybe a mile and a half from the museum as the crow flies. And they called me up and said, hey, we've got this original internment barrack, and we've been using it for the past, oh, gosh, 50 years as a maintenance shed. And and they were looking to build a new maintenance building. So they, they offered us the building. So we had the conversations with our trustees and the DNRC was incredible and offered to provide some funds to move that building to the historical museum campus. So we very quickly built a foundation. We got that building moved. And of course, once it was there, end of 2017, then the real work started. That's when we started thinking about what are we going to do with this building? You know, we wanted to preserve it initially because it was obviously it's a piece of Fort Missoula history. So we started raising some funds for a full assessment of the building and the assessment. We worked with 80 architects who are incredible, and they came in and literally looked at every piece of that building to try to tell us what could be saved, what couldn't be saved. We worked on with them on a plan of how the building would be used eventually.

Josh Slotnick: [00:09:27] I remember.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:09:27] This is it.

Josh Slotnick: [00:09:28] Was pretty expensive. This wasn't this wasn't a cheap date.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:09:31] No.

Josh Slotnick: [00:09:31] What are the what are the numbers we're talking.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:09:32] So just the assessment was $60,000 and we were fortunate enough we got a Japanese American Confinement Sites grant through the National Park Service that covered $40,000 of that.

Josh Slotnick: [00:09:40] And then when did that happen?

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:09:41] So that was in 2019. Okay. And the friends of the museum then raised the additional 20,000.

Josh Slotnick: [00:09:47] Way to go friends group! Thanks Ron.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:09:50] So in the middle of the pandemic, we had A&E out there with their masks on and doing this assessment of the building, and that all got submitted in the fall of 2020, and we hurried up and turned that around. I worked with Missoula County grants, and Nancy.

Josh Slotnick: [00:10:03] Submitted for another guy typically do the reconstruction. Who did you guys apply to for that grant?

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:10:08] So that was also a Japanese-American confinement sites grant. So we kind of figured if we'd gotten them to help with the $40,000 assessment, they would have an interest in possibly working on the bigger project. So we ended up submitting a $533,000 grant. One of the largest grants that the museum has ever received. And we found out about that in the summer of 2021. And that was kind of the big piece, right?

Josh Slotnick: [00:10:28] So yeah, that's huge.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:10:29] You know, the project was initially worked out to be about an $800,000 project. So that was like 66% of the total project cost. So we started fundraising at that point, and that process was long. There were several other foundations involved the Tracy Foundation here in Montana and then Foundation out of Texas. The Louis L Bourque Foundation stepped up. We used some money from the estate of Helga Hosford, who was a friends board member when I first started at the museum, and just a wonderful human being. She actually taught. She teach German at the university, Ron?

Ron Wakimoto: [00:10:59] I think so.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:11:01] She was a language professor at the university.

Josh Slotnick: [00:11:02] So we're looking at an $800,000 project. So for those who aren't too well informed on this issue, I'll direct this one to you. Ron. Uh, if you guys are going to go raise $800,000, why do this? Why? Why preserve this building? Why make it available?

Ron Wakimoto: [00:11:16] Well, we're the largest internment site left in the United States from World War two. That's why. And Fort Missoula has a long history of that. And so.

Josh Slotnick: [00:11:26] What? What happened at Fort Missoula in this building?

Ron Wakimoto: [00:11:29] We were set up with a situation where the Army owned the land. It was why it was Fort Missoula and it was transferred to the INS Immigration and Naturalization Service. And so we had border Patrol guards. And way back in May of 41, before Japan was in the war, and we were in the war because of Lend-Lease. We ended up having all these German and Italian prisoners.

Josh Slotnick: [00:11:53] So Lend-Lease was a program where the United States government was making war materiel available to. European countries who were involved.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:12:01] In the war. And as I tell the eighth graders that I talked to. If you're going to if you have an island like England, that's the only place that wasn't already. Dominated by Nazi Germany. And you want to supply them with men and equipment and supplies you need. Boats to get them there. So part of that was all these merchant marine ships that were locked in port. In every port that the United States controlled from Maine to the Panama Canal.

Josh Slotnick: [00:12:27] So merchant marine ships from other parts of the world.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:12:30] Yeah, well, particularly Germany and Italian.

Josh Slotnick: [00:12:32] Yeah. So that on these ships there were German and Italian nationals. And because we had already been engaged in the war, our INS as part of our federal government believed that these folks, these German and Italian nationals, could be a danger to the United States and felt like in the name of protecting the United States, they had to do something with these people. Is that an accurate approximation?

Ron Wakimoto: [00:12:53] They've been stuck in port since 39, since the war started in Europe. And, uh, they couldn't sail because the British said if that unarmed merchant marine ship sails out of port, we're going to sink it with a torpedo.

Josh Slotnick: [00:13:06] So I guess I'm a being premature historically. So at this point in 1939, our federal government didn't believe these nationals from Germany and Italy were potentially dangerous. They were more in fear that these boats that were not combat boats and weren't naval boats, if they were out sailing, being commercial boats, they would get in the way and could potentially be damaged or people killed.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:13:29] Yeah, but they weren't going to sail. And we wanted those boats to be part of our Lend-Lease. As I tell the kids again, if you're going to lend somebody a bike to go to the middle of Missoula and you have no lock because a submarine might sink it, you don't want to give them a brand new bike, so give them one that'll get there and it'll just get back. And you want no money in it. So that's what we did.

Josh Slotnick: [00:13:49] Our government going to kind of.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:13:51] We sent the Coast Guard with machine guns and rifles. We confiscated those.

Josh Slotnick: [00:13:56] Boats.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:13:57] Away and we arrested the men, send them to Ellis Island. They were processed there. That's why you have a complete list of the Italians.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:05] They were sent to Ellis Island, which formerly was the gateway for immigration, for illegal immigration from Europe.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:14:11] Yeah. And they were held there until May. And in May of 41 first 400 were put on a train, and they wanted to send them to a place that was isolated away from the coast because they were worried about invasion. They wanted to have a place that the government already owned. The hospital was really important because the hospital at Fort Missoula, Fort Missoula, we could treat inmates without having to send them to town. And then we had just been the western headquarters for the CCC. The Civilian Conservation Corps.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:39] ...was set up to house a bunch of people

Ron Wakimoto: [00:14:40] Yeah, it was set up to feed a lot of people as well. Because the contractors were here. They could provide. Clearly they could provide the meat and everything to feed those people. So it was the perfect place. So they sent 400 in the first train so that they all be brought at one time under guard. They stopped at a special sighting. They removed those people. They got into the army trucks and they brought them to Fort Missoula. The hook was there was no fence. So you want to bring people to a prison? Prison of some kind? Because there are aliens. But yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:15:15] These books weren't these weren't, uh, naval soldiers?

Ron Wakimoto: [00:15:18] No, these were noncombatants.

Josh Slotnick: [00:15:20] People who were, um, merchant marines.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:15:21] Yeah. And they were some of them came off of a large cruise ship that, you know, fed the rich, the touring the world.

Josh Slotnick: [00:15:28] A bunch were pretty young, too.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:15:30] Yeah. The average age was 24. So they'd been cooped up since 39 and just brought them to flat Missoula with soccer fields. They went crazy.

Josh Slotnick: [00:15:41] So they were happy not to be on a boat, but to actually be in a place.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:15:44] Yeah. And the other thing was, you know, when the war really cranked up, when we got into the war because of Pearl Harbor, then, uh, those Italians were here because of the Geneva Convention that we held up every part of that Geneva Convention. They got food that they were used to. They got the olive oil and the pasta.

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:02] I heard about an olive oil strike. Can you tell that story?

Ron Wakimoto: [00:16:04] Well, that's one of our stories there, that olive oil riots where there was a rumor and it was just a rumor. You know, everybody was rationing at that time during the war. We would stop bringing in the olive oil and making them use beef suet instead of olive oil. And the Italians were so incensed. They were, you know, yelling and gesturing and giving the signs to the the guards. And the one guard apparently got so nervous that he accidentally his pistol went off and wounded his foot. So that's the closest to a riot we ever had.

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:40] So those are Italians. How did Japanese people end up at? Interned at Missoula.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:16:46] Part of that story that we tell is that we had the contractors here that had the pipe and the fence, the chain link fence and the barbed wire, but there was, of course, no one there to build that fence. So we paid the Italians to build the fence because the Geneva Convention says you can't have slave labor. And so we paid the Italians. We didn't pay them a lot, but we paid them to build their own prison. And so in 1941, in December, when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7th, there had already been a list, an ABC list of Japanese that were maintained by the FBI. These were opinion leaders of the community. They had no no sabotage, no nothing like that. No infiltration of any group. But they just grabbed up those opinion leaders. And those were all well-to-do businessmen for the most part, and they grabbed them up. One of my cousin's grandfathers was taken on December 7th, about 2:00 in the afternoon. He disappeared because they couldn't tell his wife where they were going because they didn't know. Really. I mean, that's what I believe. They really didn't know where these men would end up.

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:49] And.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:17:50] Who.

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:50] What arm of the government was picking them up?

Ron Wakimoto: [00:17:52] Who was the FBI.

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:53] The FBI.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:17:54] The FBI was picking them up. Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:56] And they immediately sent some of these folks to Fort Missoula.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:18:00] Yeah, they grabbed them up on the 27th of December. They got a telegram in Los Angeles saying, hey, I'm doing okay. I'm in Missoula, Montana. Send clothes, you know, because it was good.

Josh Slotnick: [00:18:12] So your your your cousin's got a telegram. Yeah. And you said your cousin's grandfather was picked up on the seventh.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:18:19] Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:18:19] And his family.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:18:21] Two days after Christmas.

Josh Slotnick: [00:18:23] Yeah. His family didn't hear from him till the 27th. That's right. So for 20 days, he was just disappeared.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:18:28] Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:18:29] Did they have any inkling? I mean, was our federal government saying we're doing this publicly? He just. For all they knew, he was no killed in a robbery or something, that they didn't know it was an international event.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:18:39] You know, we've just been talking about in the news, the 1798 Enemy Aliens Act. Yeah. And the last time it was ever used was to put these Japanese guys into the president.

Josh Slotnick: [00:18:50] Wrote an executive order based on the Alien Enemies Act to make this happen. It's not.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:18:55] Correct. Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:18:55] That's right. Wow. So those folks were scooped up, sent to Fort Missoula. Were they treated differently? Was their experience different than the Italian seafarers who were there?

Ron Wakimoto: [00:19:06] They were given. You know, because of the Geneva Convention, they were supposed to be given reasonable food. So they got rice and soy sauce. Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:15] I'm just wondering, I if I remember the the story. Right. They had to appear before panels of of judges. Yeah. That that was different than the Italians.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:19:24] Yeah, the Italians were Italians. And part of that story is, of course, that Missoula has a large Italian Catholic community. And so they kind.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:32] Of did we back.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:19:33] Then. Yeah. And they kind of shielded these Italians and say, these are our boys. You don't mess with them.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:39] So people from town were going out.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:19:41] We want to make sure that they got decent food.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:44] Yeah, because.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:19:45] Back then, that stuff.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:46] For Missoula was not in the city in the way it is right now. Was out of town. So you're saying Italian people who lived in the city of Missoula went out to Fort Missoula.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:19:54] They eventually ended up in quires and. Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:58] So. So there was some intermixing.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:20:00] Yeah. So the Italians were here for three years. So the church kind of stepped in and they were able to join and do mass, and they were able to sing in choirs. And, and that's some of the, that's.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:10] Kind of light duty prison.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:20:12] It is. I mean, they also were able to go out and work and they were paid for their labors. So they worked the sugar beet farms because there was a shortage of men because of the service in World War two.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:20] So this really feels different than the Japanese experience. You want to describe that?

Ron Wakimoto: [00:20:24] Well, the Japanese, you know, it's all it's all over your face. Like me, you're very different. And they were grabbed up similarly, but they were treated pretty well at Fort Missoula.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:34] But you said they had to appear before panels of judges, and.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:20:37] That's the crazy part.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:38] They didn't remain at Fort Missoula for three years.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:20:41] It was really a sorting of people. They were trying to decide whether these were loyal. We had loyalty hearings at Port Missoula and we happened to have the restored courtroom. Not a lot of people get to see it, but we do have the restored courtroom that where these men were.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:56] Is that out.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:20:56] At the fort? Yes. That's a fort in T1. Wow. On the second floor.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:01] So what? What happened at these loyalty hearings? And what were the consequences?

Ron Wakimoto: [00:21:04] Well, there were boards that were supposed to be peers that were supposed to judge whether they're a loyal American or not, piers.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:21:11] So people from the areas they came from.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:21:13] From the areas.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:21:13] They came from California. Or again, they were supposed to bring in this panel of judges from that place, but in many cases it wasn't possible. So they had a number of stand ins. And Montanans that served on these.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:21:23] Counties, including Mike Mansfield, served on.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:26] Yeah.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:21:26] Wow. Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:27] So what were the consequences of these hearings?

Ron Wakimoto: [00:21:29] What could. Well, it was very difficult on the Issei,that first generation that got off the boat because at the same time, the folks being rounded up and put into assembly centers and war relocation camps were getting a questionnaire and part of the questionnaire was would you fight for the United States, defend it, defend this country? And of course, the average age of the Japanese was 60. Very different group than the 24 year old Italians. And then they were also asked, would you pledge allegiance to the United States and forswear allegiance to the Emperor of Japan? Well, these men, these Issei, were not allowed to become American citizens. An Asian could not become an American citizen by naturalization until 1952.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:17] Becoming a citizen wasn't a legal possibility for these folks.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:22:20] That's right. 41 and they did. Most of these men had been in the United States since 1907 or 19.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:25] That the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:22:28] Yeah, it starts from the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. Those people couldn't come. They still needed just like right now. They need cheap labor to hire Harvest California crops. And so the contractors immediately went out and started bringing the Japanese from Hawaii, because they had started to come to Hawaii to harvest pineapples and sugarcane.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:49] So if we go back to these loyalty hearings, folks get scooped up, they're sent to Fort Missoula. And then I imagine one at a time, they have to appear before these in these loyalties.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:22:58] Here at.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:58] A time. And then what are what are the potential outcomes of these loyalties?

Ron Wakimoto: [00:23:02] Well, mostly about 400 of them were paroled.

Josh Slotnick: [00:23:06] What does that.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:23:07] Mean? My cousin and I originally thought, oh, it's a way to let them out of camp. But we really learned later that it really does mean paroled. When Jesus Sakamoto, his grandfather, was arrested after the war for not signing in with his parole officer. Mhm. Okay. In L.A. Once he returned. So it was for real parole was just like if you were convicted, even though there was no judge, no jury, no trial.

Josh Slotnick: [00:23:34] So if they were paroled, they got to go back to their communities.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:23:37] No, no, no. They joined their families in the concentration camp.

Josh Slotnick: [00:23:41] They went. They got sent to other camps.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:23:43] Yeah. With War Relocation Authority.

Josh Slotnick: [00:23:45] With their families. So that means these men weren't the only Japanese who were scooped up. Their wives and children were also.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:23:52] There were only 4000 or so of these Issei first generation that were scooped up all over the country, and particularly in the West Coast.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:00] And their families.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:24:01] Their families were taken because of Executive Order 966, which allowed the military to develop a exclusion zone where aliens were not allowed to live, and that included half of Western half of Washington, the western half of Oregon, essentially all of California, and then about a third of Arizona.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:22] So if you were a Japanese person living in any of those places, even if you were 16 years old or four years old or a 52 year old woman, you couldn't be there.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:24:31] You couldn't be there.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:32] And where did they send you?

Ron Wakimoto: [00:24:34] Well, they first of all gathered them up and put them in assembly centers, stadiums or. Well, if you look at the our map that we have at Fort Missoula, we have all these different county fairgrounds right through the middle of California. You know, as I tell again, those eighth graders, I said, you know, most of the counties have a barbed wire fence to keep people from sneaking in. Now they just reinforce those fences to keep people from sneaking out.

Josh Slotnick: [00:25:02] So our government put these Japanese folks at an fairgrounds. Yeah. And that was a temporary thing.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:25:08] Yes, it was a temporary thing. While they built the concentration camps, the ten camps, internment.

Josh Slotnick: [00:25:14] Camps, ten camps.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:25:15] Ten camps that held about 10,000 people each.

Josh Slotnick: [00:25:18] Wow. And so if the men at Fort Missoula, I'm going to say past in quotes, past their loyalty hearing, they were allowed to rejoin their families in one of these camps. Yeah. And they had no idea how long they'd be there.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:25:29] That's exactly right. But they were really sorted out. And what happened to the others that were not paroled. They were kind of on a train then, so to speak, to move to different Justice Department camps, which for Missoula is a Justice Department camp or to an Army prisoner camp.

Josh Slotnick: [00:25:48] An army.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:25:49] Prisoner.

Josh Slotnick: [00:25:49] Camp. That sounds a lot more severe.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:25:51] Yeah. And it was more severe in terms of treatment of people, the Japanese-Americans, the these Issei had to actually protest because they were in places they were trying to force their labor when the Geneva Convention doesn't allow that for civilians.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:06] So how did this end?

Ron Wakimoto: [00:26:08] Well, in less than a year following Pearl Harbor, all the 120,000 Japanese Americans were in some kind of camp or a prison.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:17] That's an incredible effort of moving people. I mean, the United States must have dedicated a lot of resources, dollars and the effort of other people to do this work.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:26:26] And they could do that because they were only talking about 120,000, only 120,000.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:31] It seems like.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:26:32] There were there were 4 or 5 million Italians that had not naturalized.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:37] But they didn't pick.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:26:38] Them. 3 or 4 million people of German descent who had not naturalized, but they were very few that were put into camps.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:45] Wow. Matt, jump in if you want.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:26:47] What I was going to say. One other one is, I think one of the points that's really interesting to me is that they did not round up Japanese Americans in Hawaii.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:55] So you're just far enough away.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:26:57] No, not that it was far enough away. The governor of Hawaii asked because he knew that like 40 or 50% of the workforce was Japanese.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:27:04] 37%.

Josh Slotnick: [00:27:05] Nobody would be harvesting a pineapple.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:27:07] Exactly.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:27:07] So the economy wouldn't run right.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:27:10] But it shows that it wasn't really about danger.

Josh Slotnick: [00:27:13] It was.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:27:14] You know, because the place that probably would be the most vulnerable to invasion. Hawaii. Right. They didn't actually put them out in camps there.

Josh Slotnick: [00:27:20] So before we get to how this ended and how we got here, I've heard some pretty horrible stories about places like Heart Mountain. Can you describe that? Is that accurate? I mean, these stories are basically that, not places like Fort Missoula where men were for a short time to have a loyalty hearing and then get sorted and sent somewhere else. But these concentration camps where people literally waited out the war, that these were not nice places like Fort Missoula, they were pretty, pretty rough, harsh places.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:27:45] Yeah, the buildings are very different. We if you go in there, you'll see that they were military buildings, five feet long sections repeatedly, you know.

Josh Slotnick: [00:27:54] Prefabricated.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:27:55] Prefabricated. Uh, a sergeant with a platoon could put each five foot piece together and add up to 120ft to make the barracks.

Josh Slotnick: [00:28:04] So this is.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:28:05] Heart to heart mountain is very different. Heart mountain, those were just tar paper shacks thrown up as fast as they could because they had all these people in these assembly centers.

Josh Slotnick: [00:28:15] Yeah. They can't live at fairgrounds for very long.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:28:17] Yeah. Yeah, they they did. They left and left for months, many, many months.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:28:22] When they were in the fairgrounds, they were actually housing people in horse stalls.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:28:26] So depending on the horse. Yeah, the place.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:28:29] But for example, Heart Mountain, when they constructed it, it was a very quick construction job because, as Ron said, there are all these people in these assembly centers. So they built a lot of the buildings out of Greenwood. So when the winter came in Wyoming, the wood would shrink and the cold air would blow in. In the winter and during the summer, the dust from being on the prairie down there would blow through the cracks and there'd be dust everywhere. So a lot of the Japanese Americans would take newspapers, and you'd see them shoving the newspapers into the cracks of their barracks because of the situation, because obviously from Washington or Oregon or California, and you go to Powell, Wyoming, in the wintertime, it's going to be a very different feel. I mean, most of them didn't have appropriate clothes for this stuff. It was just I mean, it was a very different feel, I think, than Fort Missoula. Yeah. Of course, I mean, Josh, you and I have talked about this. Yes, they were treated better at Fort Missoula, but they still weren't allowed.

Josh Slotnick: [00:29:20] They were in prison. Yeah, yeah. And separated from their families and with no real knowledge of what was going to happen next. And what was gripping for me, just as a person is realizing at that moment their lives were not their own. Yeah. Their fates were not up to them.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:29:35] The consequences of this were so far reaching. I mean, many of these people were small business owners in Seattle.

Josh Slotnick: [00:29:40] What happened to postwar when these folks went to reintegrate? Was their property still there?

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:29:45] Or did I mean, in some cases? Yeah, in some cases, you had. There are definitely some good Samaritans, some neighbors, some people like that that stepped up and helped with these people. But there were just as many people that were opportunists that, you know, as these folks were being taken away where they were given notice, especially the Japanese American community that, you know, you have to report in three weeks. They were basically fire sailing their automobiles, trying to find homes for their pets, trying to, you know, sell their businesses or things because they knew that, you know, they'd be gone and they didn't know how long they'd be gone. So it really had a far reaching impact.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:30:16] Yeah. They had one week to ten days just to get rid of everything they had.

Josh Slotnick: [00:30:21] And then.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:30:21] When to go to an hour.

Josh Slotnick: [00:30:23] They have nothing. They can't go back to 25.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:30:26] Bucks and a bus ticket.

Josh Slotnick: [00:30:27] And no house to go back to a farm.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:30:29] My folks were in Arkansas. It's a long ways from Stockton, California. Wow, 25 bucks and a. Yeah, in a bus ticket.

Josh Slotnick: [00:30:36] Reintegration must have been very difficult.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:30:39] Well, when your neighbors think you're a criminal. Yeah. You know, it was quite difficult. You know, the the stories that, I guess, of the valor of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Who's the 44?

Josh Slotnick: [00:30:52] 42nd?

Ron Wakimoto: [00:30:53] Well, they're the most decorated unit in the history of the United States Army.

Josh Slotnick: [00:30:56] Why is that pertinent to this discussion?

Ron Wakimoto: [00:30:58] Well, it's because they were all Japanese Americans.

Josh Slotnick: [00:31:00] That's who we were looking for.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:31:01] Yeah.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:31:02] When they were literally recruited out of the.

Josh Slotnick: [00:31:04] Out of the camps.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:31:05] Yes. My dad was drafted out of Chicago. Yeah. Wow. See, they did let you out. If you stayed away from the coast, you could get out of camp if you had a job. And my dad went with four other guys to work as a crew to load boxcars with a fruit packing plant in Chicago. And he were just lucky he. His boss was a German American who said, you're just as American as I am. I'm going to give you this job because as a kid, that German guy had been behind a barbed wire fence in World War one. Wow. So?

Josh Slotnick: [00:31:37] So, Ron, as a kid, did you hear any of these stories?

Ron Wakimoto: [00:31:40] No. No, they didn't talk about this stuff at all. It's, uh. That's why, you know, the value of our museum. I went there myself as a faculty member. You know, I was probably 40, and I saw this picture, and it showed these Japanese businessmen walking in the gates of Fort Missoula, the ten foot chain link fence with the barbed wire that the Italians.

Josh Slotnick: [00:32:00] The Italians.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:32:00] Built. Yeah. And I saw that. And I thought about my mother's father. My grandfather was a very important, influential farmer in the Central Valley, California. And I called her and I said, hey, mom, wasn't pop with you guys in rower, you know, in Arkansas. And, you know, I've said this before, but she blurted back, oh, hell no. He was in prison in Bismarck, North Dakota, and that was Fort Lincoln, where they did exactly what they did at Fort Missoula. And of course, they took my grandfather. I looked at the records. They took him in the middle of February of 42 and took him to Bismarck, North Dakota.

Josh Slotnick: [00:32:37] Oh.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:32:38] And I always asked those eighth graders, hey, have you ever been to Bismarck, North Dakota, in February? You know, but the Japanese community, because of that telegram that Jesus sent to LA, they knew, oh, they're sending these guys north. So we have actually pictures in, uh, in our display showing these guys. They look like they're kind of puffy. And it's because they have three suits on they the FBI would only take them, let them take one little suitcase, but they put on three coats because they knew they were going to go to Missoula or they were going to go to Fort Lincoln.

Josh Slotnick: [00:33:11] Wow.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:33:12] Wow. So these.

Josh Slotnick: [00:33:13] Are, these are are great stories. Uh, if we go back to my question earlier and if I'm glad to come full circle, $800,000, why why spend that money making sure that this story is available to the public?

Ron Wakimoto: [00:33:25] Well, it's a story we have to keep telling. I mean, we're kind of repeating it right now.

Josh Slotnick: [00:33:29] Yeah. Expand on that. Why? Why do we have to keep telling us?

Ron Wakimoto: [00:33:32] Well, we have to keep telling them. So people think about their own stance on social justice and thinking about how do we make this fair? This is the United States.

Josh Slotnick: [00:33:44] So, Matt, if I remember right. Ronald Reagan. Yes. Apologized? Yes. Can you describe what happened?

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:33:51] It was the Civil.

Josh Slotnick: [00:33:52] Rights Act of 1988.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:33:53] It was 88. Yes. So Ronald Reagan actually was the first American president. And keep in mind, this is 40 years after internment and incarceration that formally apologized to the Japanese-American community, never to the Issei men, but to the Japanese-American community. And they did redress, which was $20,000 wrong, or 25, 20, $20,000. So all surviving members who had spent time in one of the camps were given a check for $20,000. But it was a formal apology. Acknowledging that this happened due to.

Josh Slotnick: [00:34:25] We had three reasons.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:34:26] It was fear mongering that happened immediately after the breakout of the war. It was racism and it was a failure of political leadership.

Josh Slotnick: [00:34:33] Exactly.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:34:33] So. And I think to kind of go on what Rahm was saying to why why is this important, right? I mean, we can't just understand the warm, fuzzy parts of our history if we really want to grow as citizens, as people, as a country, you have to recognize that the good and the bad in history and every country has good and bad. But you can't learn and you can't grow unless you you recognize and you understand the bad, which is why it's important to to talk about this. This is a mistake that our country made. You know, one of the things I'm always encouraged, the Japanese-American community, their slogan is always never again. But unfortunately, we are doing it again. But that's why it's important for places like Fort Missoula, because there's a lot of parallels between what happened with the Alien Enemies Act being used to arrest Japanese resident aliens, and what's happening today with immigration.

Josh Slotnick: [00:35:22] Yeah, I think it's super important as well, the folks who made these political decisions in the 1940s. We're no different than we are right now, biologically. The same, I would say. The only difference is we have the benefit of looking at their mistakes and their good choices, and can learn from that. We are basically the same and just as capable of making just as terrible mistakes if we don't choose to learn, and that learning is an active thing, and I feel like we need to create sites and maintain sites like this so people have access to that, learning that it isn't something you have to do solo with a laptop, but you can go and see it and feel it. So can you describe what this exhibit looks like right now, and how does this exhibit teach these lessons?

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:36:09] Sure. So when we started envisioning this new barrack building that we've restored now, we had kind of a very standard museum gallery style exhibit, photos on the wall, text on the wall, telling the stories. But what we really wanted was to create something that was immersive, that really allowed people to connect on a human level.

Josh Slotnick: [00:36:25] To.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:36:26] Feel it. Yes. To feel what it would have been like to be in this camp. To touch things, to see a bunk, to do all those things. So we created the space, working with Historical Research Associates, that is very much an immersive space. It focuses on five Italian nationals and five Japanese Issei men telling their individual stories through artifacts or through reproduction artifacts in the exhibit. For example, in one side, there's a desk and you open the drawer of the desk, and there's a letter that one of the men wrote to his wife.

Josh Slotnick: [00:36:54] An actual.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:36:55] It's a reproduction of a letter. But yes, it is in.

Josh Slotnick: [00:36:57] The words are the same.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:36:58] Yes, the words are the same. And the handwriting, it's an exact copy of it. If we can connect to the humanity of these men and kind of feel that, that they're not 1300 Japanese men and 1200 Italians, but they're individual human beings that had lives and jobs and homes and families. And I mean, being able to connect to them in those ways. I think it it really helps people to understand that history and what the impact on these men's lives were of this ordeal that they went through.

Josh Slotnick: [00:37:27] That's great. How's how's interest been so far?

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:37:30] It's been great. Everybody that's been through it has been super complimentary of it. I really feel like it elevates the level of interpretation in a museum. Yeah, like I said, I mean, we've been doing this work for quite a while now. I mean, it started back in, gosh, before 2008 when we acquired the building that has the original courtroom in it, but it just feels like we continue to make progress, to engage people, to tell this story, to raise awareness of it in Missoula and beyond Missoula. We've gotten incredibly involved with the Japanese American Confinement Sites Consortium, which is a group that includes Japanese American National Museum, Heart Mountain, a number of other sites. Minidoka. But we've gotten involved on a national level with these groups and just the the dialogs that we've opened with those sites and, you know, advocating for the same grant funding that helped us do our projects. So it's just been really important to build that network, because the truth is, we are kind of isolated here in Montana, and we don't have a Japanese American population, a significant population in Missoula. I mean, there's no there's a JKL is a national organization, but there's no JKL chapter in the state of Montana. It's different than trying to do this history in Little Tokyo in a way. Right? Yeah. Um, but because we have these connections with these large organizations and national organizations, it's really benefited the museum and our ability to tell the story.

Josh Slotnick: [00:38:46] That's great. Wow. Well, thanks a lot for helping us tell this story. I was with you, Matt, the other day at Juneteenth, and somebody said these words. It might have been you. Institutional courage.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:38:59] So that was Murray Pearson.

Josh Slotnick: [00:39:00] Murray Pearson.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:39:01] Okay. But Murray did say it in talking about the museum. And honestly, it's it's I don't know that I've ever been more proud to be the director of this museum than when Murray said, because I because we are at a weird time right now where there are people trying to sweep some of these stories back under the rug. We don't want to talk about this stuff anymore. I mean, the people that will tell you, oh, slavery was generations ago. Why don't you just get over here? And that's that's not healthy. And that's not a positive direction for our country to go. And we have to acknowledge these things because those were people's history and people's lives. But there's definitely a sentiment that people, a lot of people don't want to tell these stories. And I think, you know, it would be easy. I think what I said when I spoke at Juneteenth, it would be easy to kind of keep our heads low and cower in fear in this current environment. But I think what we really need to do is double down and continue to put in the work and tell the stories and make sure that people are educated so that, you know, there are people standing up to say, wait a second, this isn't right what we're doing.

Josh Slotnick: [00:39:57] I mean, I feel like it's very patriotic and very pro-American to tell these stories. Given that and you heard me say this a couple times right now. Our country was founded on trance. I'd say transcendent, transformational, if not transcendental. They go way beyond us. Ideals around equality and freedom and life, liberty and happiness, regardless of where you were born or how you were born, and making these ideals real in the world, that is, in my mind, the American project and anything we can do to help make those ideals real in the world that is American, that is patriotic. I just pro our project, and it's a super difficult thing to do because we are all human beings, and our base impulse is typically to move off of fear and a scarcity mindset, and especially thinking about FDR's comments on wartime hysteria and poor political leadership and racism. If we apply these things again, we get the same type of outcomes. And if we can step back and learn from the past and really celebrate truly who we are, this nation built on these ideals, we can do better.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:41:04] I mean, it's a cliche, but it's true that those who do not know their history are condemned to repeat it. Yeah, and that's that's true.

Josh Slotnick: [00:41:12] And this isn't old history. This is I mean, my grandfather was a World War II veteran.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:41:17] Yep. I mean, every time when I go to Los Angeles for these meetings with our confinement group. I mean, there's always survivors of the camps that are there. That's amazing. And I'm always so encouraged listening to these folks and the stories they tell, and they really feel the importance of sharing their own story, because, again, it's that idea of never again. We can never let this happen again. And the world needs to learn from what happened to us so that they can never do this to anybody else. And that same community is the one that, immediately following nine over 11, was one of the first groups to step up and say, hey, you can't put Muslim Americans in camps. That's wrong. We did this before. We are proof of what happened. So I just I'm always blown away by that, that Japanese-American community and the work they do politically and, you know, about looking out for other groups and because of their own experiences.

Josh Slotnick: [00:42:04] That's fantastic. So speaking of patriotism.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:42:08] July 4th. Yes. Onto something more. Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:42:11] No, no, it's all cut from the same cloth. What's happening at Fort Missoula on July 4th?

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:42:15] So it's going to be your typical community celebration. We're going to have our three bands are going to play on the main stage. We're going to have food trucks, all sorts of kids games and activities. The sawmill will be up and running. It's just a really fun. I always say it's not one of those events, that it's one aspect of the event that draws people to it. It's kind of the variety of things. So there's something for multiple generations. Once again, this year we're really pleased to have the Missoula City Band back, and they'll be performing first thing in the morning. So but yeah, it's it's going to be a typical 4th of July at Fort Missoula. Uh, we are continuing with our process of doing admission by donation. So we have a suggested donation. But we always say the important thing is for our community to gather together. And it's not really about, you know, charging a set admission. It's about gathering and sharing fellowship with us.

Josh Slotnick: [00:42:59] So when does it begin? What? What at what.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:43:01] Time? 10 a.m..

Josh Slotnick: [00:43:02] 10 a.m..

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:43:02] The event runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m..

Josh Slotnick: [00:43:04] And so, given the dates, kind of silly. Given the name of the.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:43:06] Day.

Josh Slotnick: [00:43:06] It's pretty easy. 10:00. Yes. All right. That's fantastic. So before we go have this standard exit question, either of you guys or both of you, have you in the recent past, run across a piece of culture that you believe is worth repeating or talking about. This can be a book, a movie, a podcast, a good conversation, anything that you like, man, that there was a little nugget that came out of that that I really want to I want to repeat.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:43:30] So a couple weeks ago, a month ago or so now, we were fortunate enough to have Chris letter, Montana Montana's poet laureate, speak at an event we.

Josh Slotnick: [00:43:40] Did.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:43:40] That is fortune. And he was talking about his book that he came out with last fall called Becoming Little Shel. And it's it's interesting. It's part memoir, but it's a very personal story of kind of him coming to understand his roots and then also telling the story of how the little Shel tribe was officially recognized. I'm not done with the book yet. I'm just just working my way into it. But, um, just to hear Chris speak, he's he's just an incredible human being. Yeah. You've met Chris. Yeah. For sure. Um. Great speaker. Uh, I love he doesn't, you know, there's no BS with Chris. I mean, he calls it like he sees it. And like I said, I've. I've gotten to hear him speak a couple of times. And so far, I'm just really enjoying his book. Um, it's very like I said, it's very. It's that combination of really interesting memoir to learn about him as a human, but then also to understand, you know, some of that, what he's gone through with, you know, his father not acknowledging his heritage and Chris coming to understand that. And then after his father passes, really delving in to understand what that means, but then also telling, like I said, that story of the little shell people. So it's it's just been a really interesting book so far.

Josh Slotnick: [00:44:44] So that's.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:44:45] Fantastic. And Chris is a great writer as well.

Josh Slotnick: [00:44:47] It's a great recommendation. Yeah. Ron, what do you got?

Ron Wakimoto: [00:44:49] It's called bridge to the Sun by, uh, Bruce Anderson. And it's primarily, uh, talking about the miss in the 42nd that we just talked, we talked about earlier, got the Congressional Gold Medal from Congress in 2010. It was almost, uh, they were almost going to give it without having the miss in there, because until 1972, 40 years had gone by since the World War Two or since 30 years had gone by. This was top secret and that was the Military Intelligence service. That was all Japanese Americans who fought in the Pacific via the their ability to translate and interrogate and interpret, uh, Americanism to people, uh, in lots of ways. It's a great story. Great. Because because it was always a top secret. So no one ever talked about it. The men who were in there, the 4000 or so that were in there, never talked about that. And you always wonder, you know, how if you see Merrill's Marauders and you see him standing there, he's got two Japanese guys. They're Japanese Americans who can speak the language really well as to pass for Japanese from the old country. So it's very different. Right after the war started in in 41, Army, U.S. Army officers and Navy officers realized what was going to save us was to have excellent translators, and they had to be more than likely Kibei.

Josh Slotnick: [00:46:20] What does that mean?

Ron Wakimoto: [00:46:21] Kibei is a Japanese American word for to return again. And it's. What happened is that there were so many Japanese Americans like my dad. My dad only knew Sacramento slang. Japanese. Ah. I mean, you know, he could get by. Sure, but that was about it. And he spoke English and and so that they couldn't get by. Trying to look at borders from, uh, in from the real Japanese fluent army. Yeah. Native speakers. And then they had to understand military talk as well in Japanese. Wow. And so those naval officers and those army officers realized we need Kibei to. Start to have this military intelligence school. So they actually started in the Presidio. In San Francisco in 41. And then, of course, you couldn't have Japanese faces in military. U.s. Army officer. Sir. Right. Uniforms. Walking around the Presidio and out in public because everybody else was going to camp. So. So they had to move that. They moved it to Minnesota. They moved the school to Minnesota? Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:47:27] Wow. What a cool story.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:47:29] The Kibei were men that were American citizens. But they were educated in Japan.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:47:33] Yeah. And you're right, I should say.

Josh Slotnick: [00:47:35] They went to school.

Ron Wakimoto: [00:47:36] Again. Yeah. They were. They were. They were sent by their folks most of the time to to to learn the language. Plus maybe hopefully to a lot of families find a wife, you know. Yeah. And, and women were sent there to learn the traditional stuff like that to the Japanese stuff, but that's what happened. Some generals have said it's reduced the war in the Pacific by over a year. Wow. Because of their ability to understand what was going on and to translate that into another.

Josh Slotnick: [00:48:04] Story that needs to be told, I ran into a little slice of culture. This was just in a conversation, and I found myself repeating it over the past few days. So I'm finding it useful. Maybe you guys would find it useful too. I was having dinner on our back porch with a couple friends and my wife and talking about the the war in Ukraine, the impending war, now hot war in Iran, to some degree, general economic uncertainty. Just a feeling like we're in a tense historical moment. Regardless of your political proclivities, we are in a tense historical moment and having kind of this intense conversation about it. And my friend said, yeah, this rhubarb crisp is really delicious. Yeah. And to realize that all these things can be true all at once, and we can be aware and attentive and concerned and involved and also appreciate the wonders of living where we are in the lives that we have. I took that to heart. So thank you a ton for coming on. And thank you a ton for coming, Matt. And I'm so grateful that you are part of our team at the County, and so grateful that you at Ron would dedicate your time to these efforts. So thanks everybody for listening and we'll talk to you next time.

Matt Lautzenheiser: [00:49:13] Thanks, Josh.

Josh Slotnick: [00:49:15] Thanks for listening to the agenda. If you enjoy these conversations, it would mean a lot. If you'd rate and review the show on whichever podcast app you use.

Juanita Vero: [00:49:23] And if you know a friend who would like to keep up with what's happening in local government, be sure to recommend this podcast to them.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:49:28] The agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners is made possible with support from Missoula Community Access Television. Better known as MCAT, and our staff in the Missoula County Communications Division.

Josh Slotnick: [00:49:41] If you have a question or a topic you'd like us to discuss on a future episode, email it to communications@missoulacounty.us.

Juanita Vero: [00:49:48] To find out other ways to stay up to date with what's happening in Missoula County, go to missoula.com updates.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:49:56] Thanks for listening.