Topaz Relocation Center
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The Topaz Relocation Center was an internment camp which housed Nikkei -- Americans of Japanese descent and immigrants who had come to the United States from Japan. There were a number of internment camps used during the Second World War, under the control of the War Relocation Authority.
The internment camp consisted of 19,800 acres, nearly 4 times the size of the more famous Manzanar War Relocation Center in California. Most Topaz internees lived in the central residential area located approximately 15 miles west of Delta, Utah, though some lived as caretakers overseeing agricultural land and areas used for light industry and animal husbandry.
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[edit] History of Topaz
Following American entry into WWII, approximately 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent and Japanese-born residents of the West Coast of the United States were forced to leave their homes in California, Oregon and Washington as a result of Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin Roosevelt.
About 10,000 left the off-limits area during the "voluntary evacuation" period, and avoided internment.
The remaining 110,000 were soon removed from their homes by Army and National Guard troops. First housed in places such as racetrack stables, eventually they were moved to various internment camps, hundreds or even thousands of miles from home. See Japanese Internment for more information.
Topaz was the primary internment site in the state of Utah. A smaller camp existed briefly at Dalton Wells, a few miles north of Moab, which was used to isolate a few men considered to be troublemakers prior to their being sent to Leupp, AZ. A site at Antelope Springs, in the mountains west of Topaz, was used as a recreation area by the residents and staff of Topaz.
Topaz was originally known as the Central Utah Relocation Center, but this name was abandoned when administrators realized that the acronym was naturally pronounced "Curse." The camp was then briefly named for the closest settlement, until nearby Mormon residents (with their own heritage of forced relocation) demanded that their town name not be associated with a "prison for the innocent." The final name, Topaz, came from a mountain which overlooks the internment camp from 9 miles away.
The camp was opened 11 September 1942, and eventually became the 5th-largest city in Utah, with over 9,000 internees and staff, and covering approximately 31 square miles (mostly used for agriculture). It was closed on 31 October (Halloween) 1945, a date which lives in irony (wryly considered to be the appropriate day to "end a CURC").
Most of the internees lived in a central living area, which covered approximately one mile square.
[edit] Life at Topaz
Surrounded by desert, Topaz was an entirely new environment for internees, most of whom had been rounded up in the San Francisco area. At an altitude of 4600 feet above sea level, arid and subject to dust storms and wide temperatures swings during night and day, nonetheless it was an improvement over the conditions found at the Tanforan and Santa Anita racetracks which had been interim internment locations.
While many of the older generation were from Japan, most of those under 30 years of age were Nisei, first-generation American citizens of Japanese descent, and Kibei, Nisei who had been sent to Japan as children for periods of traditional schooling.
Though built with a barbed-wire fence and seven guard towers, there were attempts to make life at Topaz as "normal" as possible. Barracks were given "street addresses" and internees were encouraged to create gardens. The barracks themselves had been built with sliding windows, rather than the hinge-and-stick windows used at other camps, providing slightly better weather sealing, but most were unfinished inside when the internees first moved in. Drywall interiors walls were later added. Linoleum was also eventually laid down over the bare wood in many barracks.
The Topaz High School sports teams were known as the "Rams." The banner displayed at the Topaz High School 40th Reunion featured a drawing of a ram.
Following two shooting incidents in 1943, one of which resulted in the death of 63-year-old James Hatsuaki Wakasa, security at Topaz was reevaluated. It was determined that fears of subversive activity at the camp were largely without basis, and security was relaxed significantly. Internees were able to get permission to leave the camp for hiking and even employment in nearby Delta, but Topaz was still an internment camp, with residents subject to the control of the War Relocation Authority. The more open atmosphere dampened nearly all of the anti-Army agitation.
One internee, Dave Tatsuno (1913-2006), had a movie camera smuggled into the camp, at the urging of his Caucasian boss. Film which he shot from 1943 to 1945 became the documentary Topaz. This film was deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress in 1997, and was the second film to be selected for preservation in the National Film Registry (behind the "Zapruder" film of the JFK assassination). Until his death, Tatsuno was an Emeritus member of the board of the Topaz Museum, which is working to preserve the site.
A former Civilian Conservation Corps camp at Antelope Springs, in mountains 90 miles to the west, was taken over as a recreation area for internees and camp staff, and two buildings from Antelope Springs were brought to the central area to be used as Buddhist and Christian churches. The airstrip at Antelope Springs was used by liaison planes which flew some camp administrators for brief trips to the mountains. Internees and most staff had to endure a three-hour truck trip each way.
Internees in all of the camps left their mark on many of the improvements made during their imprisonment. Names, comments and even poetry were impressed into drying concrete in a number of projects, some in English and others in Japanese. These can be seen today, though visitors must search for them on their own.
A number of young men from Topaz joined with their counterparts from other internment camps to sign up in the Army to fight in Europe with the highly-decorated 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Photographs of Topaz activities include visits from soldiers, home on leave, and the mothers of Nisei soldiers killed in action in Italy and France.
While a cemetery site was dedicated, there is no record that it was ever used. Although Yoshiko Uchida reported that there were several burials, it is believed that she was remembering funeral services as being followed by burial. Internees' bodies were transported 150 miles to Salt Lake City, cremated, and returned to their families so that they could be taken when they left Topaz.
Notable internees included Goro Suzuki, the Oakland-born entertainer remembered by millions under his stage name, Jack Soo, star of the original stage and movie productions of Flower Drum Song and remembered for his role as Detective Nick Yemana on the 1970's sitcom Barney Miller. Suzuki was a favorite performer at Topaz gatherings.
[edit] Topaz in Film
Topaz Relocation Center is the setting for the film "American Pastime," a dramatization based on actual events, which tells the story of Nikkei baseball in the internment camps. A portion of the camp was duplicated for location shooting in Utah's Skull Valley, approximately 40 miles west of Salt Lake City and 75 miles north of the actual Topaz site. The film is set for release in 2007.
[edit] Topaz in literature
Yoshiko Uchida's young adult novel Journey to Topaz recounts the story of Yuki, a young Japanese-American girl, whose world is disrupted when, shortly after Pearl Harbor, she and her family must leave their comfortable home in the Berkeley suburbs for the dusty barracks of Topaz. The book is largely based on Uchida's personal experiences: she and her family were interned at Topaz for three years.
[edit] Topaz Today
After Topaz was closed, the land was sold and most of the buildings were auctioned off and removed from the site. Even the pipes used to provide water to the camp were sold, and the trenches remain following their removal years ago.
Many of the buildings from the camp still stand, used as farm buildings throughout central Utah, and an alert observer will see several of them during the drive to and from the central area site. Generally in disrepair, a few are well-maintained by their current owners and used for storage or as seasonal apartments for migrant workers.
The remains of the central living area, approximately one square mile, are located southwest of the intersection of 10000 West and 4500 North streets, in Millard County. One of the barracks has been moved to Delta, where it now sits behind the Great Basin Museum. Most of the central area now belongs to the Topaz Museum. Other portions are still used as residential sites.
In 1976, the year of the United States' Bicentennial, a monument was placed on the northwestern corner of the central area. Having been vandalized several times, it was eventually replaced in 2002 by another monument of more modern design.
Other areas of significance within the camp's outer boundaries include turkey and hog farms, a cattle ranch and farmlands, all built on land which was bare and unused when the internees arrived. Today, these sites belong to various private owners, a number of whom have made plans to transfer the properties to Topaz Museum.
Numerous foundations, concrete-lined excavations and other ground-level features can be seen at the various sites, but few buildings remain, and natural vegetation has taken over most of the abandoned areas.
The runway at Antelope Springs has been destroyed by numerous trenches which have been dug across it, put there solely to prevent any plane from being able to use it.
Visitors to sites at Topaz (or any other internment camp) are warned to watch for and avoid rattlesnakes, scorpions, spiders, wasps and other dangerous wildlife which may be present in the remote, back country areas selected for the internment camps. If planning to explore on foot at any time of year, visitors should bring plenty of drinking water due to the desert location. There are no public facilities of any type. Portions of the camp are now private property and may be closed to the public.
On December 21, 2006 President Bush signed H.R. 1492 into law guaranteeing $38,000,000 in federal money to restore the Topaz relocation center along with nine other former Japanese internment camps. "H.R. 1492".
[edit] Remembrance
The Topaz Museum (PO Box 241, Delta, Utah 84624) works to preserve important sites at Topaz, and to provide information to those interested in the history of the internment camps.
Topaz Museum mission statement:
To preserve the Topaz internment experience during World War II; to interpret its impact on the internees, their families, and the citizens of Millard County; and to educate the public in order to prevent a recurrence of a similar denial of American civil rights.
[edit] Statistics
- Camp opened: 11 September 1942 (first internees arrived)
- Camp closed: 31 October 1945 (last internees left)
- Total number interned: 11,212
- Peak number of internees: 8,316
- Internee deaths at Topaz: 130 by natural causes, 1 killed by gunfire
- Nisei who joined United States Army while interned at Topaz: 451 (80 volunteers, 371 drafted)
- Killed In Action: 15
- George W. Bush signed the H.R 1492 into law gaurenteeing $38,000,000 to the Topaz Relocation Center and many other
internment camps.
[edit] Links
- http://topazcamp.org/index.html The Topaz Museum website
- http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/anthropology74/ce12.htm The chapter covering Topaz, from a National Park Service online book about internment camps.
[edit] Additional reading
- Desert Exile -- The Uprooting of a Japanese American Family Yoshiko Uchida, 1982, University of Washington Press
- "Journey to Topaz" novel for children by Yoshiko Uchida, Grade 4 and up.
- "Journey Home" sequel to "Journey to Topaz."
- The Price of Prejudice -- The Japanese-American Relocation Center in Utah During WWII Leonard J. Arrington, 1962, 25th Faculty Honor Lecture of Utah State University; 1997, with photographs and update, The Topaz Museum
- Jewel of the Desert -- Japanese American Internment at Topaz Sandra C. Taylor, University of California Press
- Citizen 13660 Mine Okubo, 1946, Columbia University Press
