Former Heart Mountain incarceree Sam Mihara will speak about his experiences at noon Thursday at the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center. The talk will be followed by a signing of his book “Blindsided: The Life and Times of Sam Mihara.”

When Mihara was 9 years old, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II. Shortly after, Mihara and his family were forced from their San Francisco home by armed military guards and sent to the Heart Mountain prison camp in Wyoming. They would live crowded into a single 20-by-20-foot room for the next three years. Today, at 90-years-young, Mihara is the only camp survivor who tours nationally and internationally speaking about this time. Over 90,000 people have heard Sam’s story detailing the difficulties he, his family and other Japanese Americans faced before, during and after the imprisonment.

The program opens with photographs from renowned photographer Dorothea Lange and the Mihara family collection that vividly highlights the hate Sam’s family and other Japanese Americans experienced just before and after the Dec. 7, 1941, attack. Sam explains how the decision was made to remove and imprison only Japanese people from the West Coast, and not Germans or Italians. He describes in detail the conditions in the prison camp — from the imsy barracks where prisoners lived to the security system designed to assure no prisoners escaped. He goes on to talk about how the prisoners were released just before the end of the war.

The presentation is free and open to the public. This event has been made possible through the support of Wyoming Humanities.