From Internment Camps to COVID: The Value of Preserving Missoula County's History

Matt Lautzenheiser, executive director of the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula, explains the importance of history and how it has shaped the culture in Missoula and the country. Making history relatable from one human’s perspective to another, the museum works hard to help educate about Missoula County and preserve the historical gems that give meaning to this place we call home. 

Matt explains how the museum decides what to memorialize and how that has shifted over time as cultures and lifestyles have evolved. He shares lessons learned from the internment camp, what it’s like to run a museum during COVID-19 and how all this good work is a part of Missoula County government. 

There’s also exciting news about a grant award that will help rebuild and restore two WWII Internment barracks on the museum grounds. The grant, paired with community donations, will help the museum continue to tell the story of the 1,200 non-military Italian men, 1,000 Japanese resident aliens, 23 German resident aliens and 123 Japanese Latin and South Americans who were sent to Fort Missoula during WWII. The funding will also help the museum expand, which will provide additional space for the museum to preserve their artifact collections. 

The episode is full of wisdom and inspiration for Missoula County residents and beyond. 

If you would like to contribute to the final push of restoring the barracks, donations are accepted at https://fortmissoulamuseum.org/restore-the-barracks/

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

Transcript

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Welcome back to the tip of the spear with your Missoula County Commissioners. I'm Juanita Varo, joined by Commissioner Dave Strohmaier, and our special guest this afternoon is Matt Lautzenheiser, the executive director of the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula. Welcome. Thanks for having me, guys. I appreciate it. Great to have you here. So there's a lot of work happening at the museum that teaches us about the importance of history as museums do, and I'm going to share a bit about the value of history and how the museum decides what to memorialize. He'll describe how a museum is run during COVID and and you know how this is part of the great work that Missoula County does. So. Yeah. Well, and maybe one of the the little known parts of Missoula County government, I think that for many folks, good point, they might be aware of such a thing as the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula or Fort Missoula, but they might not understand that there is a direct connection with Missoula County government and we need to mention the internment camp. And I would hazard a guess that there are plenty of folks residents right here in Missoula County who are not aware of really the national significance of this site and how over 2,000 Italian and Japanese nationals were housed there at the internment camp back in the, I guess it'd be the World War II era of the 20th century. Matt, just maybe give us a thumbnail sketch on the history of that, of that era of the camp and also what you've been actively doing out there by way of seeking funding to do interpretation programming or historic preservation. Sure. I'd be happy to do that, Dave. And of course, thank you guys for having me today. I really appreciate it. As you said, kind of raising some awareness and one of the lesser known departments here with the Missoula County. So the internment camp was actually, interestingly enough, it existed before the United States ever even got involved in World War II. Back in 1941, when war broke out in Europe, there were a number of Italian ocean liners and Italian nationals that were caught in the United States. So essentially, the United States impounded those ships and they held those foreign nationals, waited for their visas to run out. At that point, they were illegally in the United States, so they were arrested for being essentially illegal aliens and sent to places like Fort Missoula. Now, the reason Fort Missoula was actually chosen was because in a previous era, in the 1930s, it was a CCC camp, so there was this infrastructure that existed there. So when you're going to arrest all these people, you need a place to put them. And they didn't have time to build a camp specifically like they did for the camps that happened later on. So they essentially chose a place like Fort Missoula that had that infrastructure. So you owe the War Relocation Authority. So those are the better known places when you think of like Heart Mountain, that's down there near Cody, Wyoming and Minidoka and Manzanar and places like that. So the Italians were here first, and the Italians spent about three years here. So from about 1941 to 1944, the Japanese were a little different. These guys were resident aliens living in the U.S., but the way that the laws were written at the time, they couldn't become U.S. citizens. So they essentially when the war broke out and when the U.S. after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, they were already lists that existed in the federal government, where they had a list of all these people that were living in our country as resident aliens and people that they deemed, quote unquote likely to be disloyal to the United States, which we know now wasn't true at all. So they essentially scooped these folks up and they sent them to Fort Missoula along with the Italians. And most of the Japanese weren't there. As long as the Italians, they were kind of put through a loyalty hearing process and then eventually typically moved on to other camps. One of the things that makes us really unique is that and I don't think even our Missoulians know this is that we have the most complete and intact internment or incarceration camp in the United States at Fort Missoula. Wow. Just in recognition of that. Talk a little bit about your efforts relative to historic preservation and telling that story. Sure. One of the things we've really worked on in it began all the way back in 2008, when we acquired the headquarters building at Fort Missoula, which has the original courtroom that was used to conduct these loyalty hearings. But, you know, beginning then and then kind of moving forward, we've put a real emphasis on telling this story because I mean, obviously, we're always going to be a county historical museum. That's what we do. That's kind of a bread and butter. But we saw this potential with this story of internment incarceration to reach a much broader audience to be a site of regional or even national or even international significance because of the fact that we're the most intact camp. And then we have this interesting story to tell about the Japanese and Italians, which wasn't really being told anywhere else. So we've really put an emphasis on that. And one of the things that's helped us quite a bit is this Japanese-American Confinement Sites grant program. The historical museum at this point is now essentially applied for and received four of these grants. The first was to restore the. One, we had one that helped us produce an Emmy nominated or northwest Emmy nominated documentary film, an interpretive trail and an exhibit, and then the two most recent or for our barracks restoration and reconstruction project with which I think is what you're asking about, right, Dave? Well, that's kind of, yeah, the most recent thing that I think has come online here. Yeah, it's I mean, it's incredibly exciting. So we were able to acquire two original brick buildings, one from the county that was originally at the fairgrounds before the fairgrounds renovation. And then the second one was a building at the DNRC and wanting to don't ask me for the abbreviation for that. I always get it screwed up. Department of Natural Resources. There you go. I knew somebody would know it, so we acquired these two buildings. But, you know, obviously we were able to get some assistance from those organizations, from the county and from the DNRC to to move them and put them up. But we didn't really, you know, essentially we didn't have the money to restore them. So we started a process with local architecture firm A&E Architects. They did a full assessment and planning for these two buildings, and then we're able to use that document, which was funded partially through a confinement sites grant to apply for a much larger grant. And that's when we just found out about last summer, which is over a half a million dollar grant, which is the largest grant organizations ever received to do the full reconstruction and restoration of those two buildings. Wow. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. We still have a little ways to go, though. So, you know, we were very fortunate, so we got that grant. We also got a grant from the Private Montana Foundation for $67,000, and we have a support through our Friends of the Museum Group. So we're down to about $70,000 we need to raise, and we're currently working on that last little bit of the fundraising piece, but we've raised over 90 percent on the project budget so far. So if this timeline The timeline, so we actually just put out an RFQ (request for qualifications) for the the the design and planning or the final permitting process of this. So the goal would be to start construction next summer and then have the project completed by the fall of 2023. Great. If folks are out there, listeners who have $70,000 burning a hole in their pocket. It sounds like there there's an opportunity to put that to use. So Dave, you give me the perfect segue because we actually just sent out our annual fund request letters. Yes. Don't we get it? Yes, I did, actually. Yes, there we go. And our checks in the mail, right, Dave? Yeah. It might not be quite 70,000 bucks, but if someone was so inclined. Yes. Reach out to the museum. Yes, most definitely. So we put out this annual fund request. We have a couple of other grant possibilities out there, but we're hoping to finish the fundraising phase of this through the annual fund request and a couple of, like I said, smaller grants, hopefully in the spring. And then we would be fully funded for the project that wouldn't even start construction until the summertime. So we're excited about that. And as you guys know, if you've ever done any fundraising, it's the the easiest part to raise is the last seventy thousand. The hardest part is the first half. So getting that big confinement sites grant and getting the county support on that and the support from the grants department was incredibly helpful. And you know, you get that big chunk of money and then it's much easier to to reach that goal of the second half. Do you have a website to share with folks? Sure, it's fortmissoulamuseum.org is our website, and there are links there that if they want to go and make a contribution to the annual fund campaign, they're welcome to do that. Great. Well, back to the internment camp. I mean, it's a lot to unpack and one project, um, how do you decide what to remember and what to highlight? So first and foremost, we always go to our mission statements. So like a lot of nonprofits, your mission statement guides everything you should do as a museum or as a non-profit. And our mission statement is preserving Missoula County's history for the education and enjoyment of the public. So that's a pretty general mission statement, which allows us to incorporate a lot of these different stories into it. But I think beyond that, some of it is looking at your resources you have around like obviously, we're part of the Fort Missoula Historic District, so we want to make sure preserving the memories and the stories around that, whether it be the CCC stories, the Buffalo soldiers at Fort Missoula or the internment camp that we talked about a little bit ago. So that's kind of where we start. But your question, I think, was thinking more about how does that change over time? That and then, yeah, how do those decisions change based on society and culture changing and catching up? So how do you navigate that tricky waters? Yeah. So obviously, society and who's who's studying history and who's doing historical research changes? And one of the biggest changes in the history field, there are a couple I think one was after after World War II, you had the ability for people that were on the GI Bill, so you had people that couldn't go to college prior to World War II. You know, part of that time, if you weren't the child of a doctor or an attorney or something like that, you didn't go to college, you know, you got a job and you when you graduated after World War II, all of a sudden, these different groups of people that wouldn't have traditionally been given the opportunity to study at the college level were all of a sudden able to go to graduate school. They're able to pursue higher level degrees, and they came from more than just kind of a wealthy white background. They came from a variety of different backgrounds and you see the field change in the 60s and 70s because all of a sudden these people are getting PhDs and they're interested in their own stories and interested in more broad stories of greater society. And not just kind of the old, you know, the old dead white guy history, essentially. So they started researching this and then then that eventually trickles down to the museum field, and museums also see additional professionals from different backgrounds and different socioeconomic situations being able to pursue higher level degrees. And they're then researching these more diverse topics. So as time passes, I think history reflects that. It does take us a little bit of time. We're historians, we don't do things really quickly, but I think you're starting to see the result of that as we move forward with the stories we're telling and looking at more diverse stories and trying to better engage all elements of our community and not just, you know, the traditional history or the ones that have always been talked about. Do you have maybe an example that kind of a recent struggle you've had or a change you guys have made in the past 10 years or so? Yeah, I mean, obviously the best example is the internment camp stuff. It's, you know, it's something taking advantage of the resources that were there. But one of the big changes was the creation of this confinement sites grant program that made funds available for projects like ours that before, you know, I mentioned the earlier project. So the Baric restoration is an $800,000 project. We're able to get over a half a million dollar grant to this program. I don't know that this program or this project would happen if it wasn't for a program like that. And, you know, that program grew out of again, this interest in more diverse stories and, you know, not just telling the the happy parts of our history, but the parts that we can learn from as well, too. And I think that's what you guys do so well and is a real inspiration and example for other similar county type historical museums because you do have that thematic approach contextualizing both your collection and and the stories you tell and broader regional and national stories if you go to, I've been to a lot as I've traveled, traveled around Montana and in the West. I've been to a lot of historical county historical society or or county history museums, and oftentimes they are just buildings crammed full of every this that and the other thing that folks have donated to the museum. And there's a lot of interesting things on display, but oftentimes lacking is that interpretive thread that helps folks understand what all of this means. I think you're right, Dave, and I think when it comes to a lot of smaller museums, it it's a hard thing to understand, but sometimes less is more. I've been affiliated with other museums and worked with smaller museums, and they'll take donations and they feel like every single thing that they've ever been given has to be on display someplace. And what happens is everything it it ends up being so crammed in there and everything on top of each other, you're not even really able to see the real gems that are there within those smaller sites. The other key is once you move past just displaying artifacts to actually telling stories. And I think that's one of the things we work really hard to do at our museum is every bit of history we tell is not just history, but it's a story. We try to personalize those stories. So when we talk about the internment camp, we try to share information about individual people that were held there because I think human beings relate to other human beings. So you can either have this kind of 30,000 foot view or you can tell the everyday story to kind of enlighten folks on the bigger view of history. Yeah, we can go to the antique mall if we want to see knickknacks. Yes, ad nauseum. So to my grandmother's house, Yeah, absolutely. Many of our grandmother's houses. Let's zoom out for just a minute and talk about the value of history. It's not uncommon that I hear from folks that history endeavors like what is out there at the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula are amenities that in some cases maybe we just can't afford. So that's the first thing the culture, history aspects of of local government might be the first thing to be jettisoned. I would tend to disagree with that. But rather than put words in your mouth. Talk to us a little bit about from just a personal and professional vantage point, what you see is the value of history and making that history known and accessible to the public. So I think the two bits here I'm going to I'm going to tell a story in a second before we get to that. I think, you know, one of the things is as government, we want to see is engaged, informed citizens and educated citizens that can make good decisions. And understand parts of a community, and I think you guys see this probably in a more regular basis than a lot of other folks. There have been a number of different things that have been tried and done here in Missoula and Missoula County. But you know, we have to understand where we came from so we don't make the same mistakes over and over again. And I think that's one of the big lessons in history. Which brings me to a story. So I've had the utmost pleasure of meeting a gentleman by the name of Norm Maneta and Norm Maneta was the secretary of transportation during the George W. Bush's administration, and he was the secretary of transportation on 9-11, when when they had to shut down the airplanes and everything else. So the story Norm tells and I think this is a good lesson in history is that so Norm had been interned in an internment camp or an incarceration camp when he was a boy. And as he was sitting there in the war room right after 9-11, after the planes that hit the towers, and there was a lot of folks pushing for the internment of Muslim-Americans immediately after 9-11, and Norm was there and George W. Bush, when they brought up this issue of interning Muslims, George W. Bush turned them and said, I'm not going to let them do to these people what we did to Norm's people. And I often think what would have happened if Norm Maneta wasn't sitting at that table that day and that they didn't recognize their own history. So I think that's a great example, though. I mean, we would have made a mistake that we made during World War Two with Japanese and Italians and Germans as opposed to, you know, having that history or having norm representing that history there. We avoided a huge pitfall that would have been another, you know, a stain on our country. So I think that's just that's a much bigger example, Dave. But I think that's a good example of why we need to understand our history. I mean, if we don't know where we came from, it's very difficult to make informed good decisions about the present. Absolutely. You know, it's a powerful story. Well, do you want to add some more about why your team or how your team focuses on the preservation accessibility to the public health, how hard they work? Yes, they do. So we have a pretty small team at the museum. So it's we have seven total staff members, myself as a director and then we have five of the folks in the office and then a maintenance person that helps us and we maintain a thirty two acre campus with about 20 historic structures at the fort. We see roughly 50,000 people a year, and that's a mix of the folks that actually come out from one of our programs or go through the museum, but also the people that just use the property. I think the historic tourist district is a real gem in Missoula. I mean, as we continue to grow and push out, having that open space and having those recreational opportunities in a place like Fort Missoula and making sure we're preserving that is incredibly important. We're really thankful to be able for people to be able to enjoy us like that. I actually got a thank you card from them the other day that sent a check for membership, not because she really comes to the museum, but because she walks her dog at the fort every day. And she's so appreciative that we care for the grounds and that she has this place to be able to recreate and do those kind of things. Now, one year, I forget your original question. So no, This is great. Okay. How is the museum related to Missoula County government? Oh, sure. You know, we've been affiliated with Missoula County government since the late 1970s, and initially there was a one mil of public dollars. It was split between the Historical Museum and the Musil Art Museum. Things really change for us in 2003, when we went to the Missoula County voters and they approved a two mill levy specifically in support of the Historical Museum in Fort Missoula. And that has just been a game changer for us. It allows us to have those seven professional staff that I mentioned allows us to have our operating dollars. And having come from a private nonprofit world, it's so wonderful to have that public support so that we can focus on making a difference in the community. We can keep our prices free from Missoula County residents or low for folks from outside the county. We do all of our education programs for free with the local schools, but having those public dollars allows us to not only be professional but to provide all those services to our community. Where is it a small nonprofit? You're constantly scraping pennies together and putting on small fundraisers and having to charge people higher amounts for admission because you have to find a way to pay your people and keep the lights on. So we're so fortunate to be part of Missoula County and have those public dollars that allow us really to focus on making a difference in the community and not worried about what our bottom line is constantly. What's it been like operating a museum during the middle of a pandemic? We've all learned how to use Zoom and teams and all those things. It's been challenging in addition to our or two mill public dollars. We also have a Friends of the Museum group and they're kind of our fundraising nonprofit wing and some of the great events of the community is accustomed to the 4th of July. The book sale the cheese curds at the western Montana Fair. Ah, the cheese curds. Yes, yes. So they put on and they assist us with those groups, and they also are a partner that we help with fundraising and grant writing and such. So the challenge for them is we haven't been able to do a lot of these public events. And it's also been detrimental to the museum in the sense that we want to be a community partner and we want to provide these opportunities educational opportunities, recreational opportunities for the Missoula community. But we just haven't been able to do those safely in the last year and a half, almost two years now. So we're always trying to find creative ways, whether it be online content, virtual meetings, those kind of things to provide those services to the public. I was very pleased that we were able with the smaller groups with schools to do our school group program this year. So we still had quite a few school groups that came through, which is one of the most important things we do is in educating the youth on our great history here in Missoula County But it's been really challenging from a fundraising standpoint for that Friends of the Museum group. But also, you know, it was very strange. I mean, we essentially were closed for six or eight months last year. So how do you operate as a museum director for a museum that can't open its doors to the public? It was just it was very strange. But like I said, we just tried to focus as much as we could on finding alternative ways to reach Missoula County's constituents and to reach our public and to reach those students that are interested in learning about the history. Well, since I'm sure someone will ask the question out there, I might as well ask it for them. One of the most, I think, beloved things that the museum has been doing the past number of years and I've participated as an attendee of This is the Lantern Tour and a great event. I learn a lot each time I've I've participated in this not happened in this year. Or unfortunately, no. I mean, it was one of the hardest decisions we had to make because we all were able to go back to some semblance of normal for a couple of months this summer. And I think we all were so excited to do that. We were able to have the Fourth of July. We're able to do things like that. But unfortunately, we've seen this huge spike in cases. I know it's impact. To the county, city government, and it's impacted at the museum, so we unfortunately have just said we're going to kind of quiet things down through the end of the year and then we're hoping once we hit January, February, we'll see another dip in case numbers and we can start to get back to some more normal operations. So we are still open to the public. Folks are always welcome to come in to the museum tours, the galleries. What are your hours? So we are open during the winter hours from Tuesday through Sunday, from noon to 5 p.m. daily. And as always, Missoula County residents are always free if they want to come visit the museum. Great. Thanks so much for joining us today and been really, really fascinating. Any other ways folks can stay up to date or be engaged? They're welcome to follow us on Facebook. We do pretty regular posts on Facebook and we do. We do fun stuff. We share historic photos. I do a thing every week titled Today I Learned, which is all about a Montana history fact. And folks can interact with us through there and we are going to have we do have some virtual exhibits and things like that that are available through our website. I mentioned earlier it's FortMissoulaMuseum.org. Fantastic. Well, thanks for joining us, Matt. This is a delight and give our thanks to your staff out there. I'll do that. I'll do that and thank you guys for giving me the opportunity. And you know, it's great to be part of Missoula County, so we appreciate the support. Great. Glad you're here. Thank you. Thank you.