Topaz Internment Camp

During Spring Break in March, Andrew and I drove to Delta in Central Utah. We went there because the site of the former Central Utah Relocation Center, popularly known as Topaz, is a few miles out of Delta.

After Pearl Harbor, Anglo Americans on the West Coast were very worried about the threat from the Japanese Americans who lived there. Although ultimately not a threat, the government required all Japanese Americans (included U.S.-born citizens and their immigrant parents who were not allowed to become naturalized by racist legislation) to leave the West Coat. They were forced into internment/concentration camps for World War II. Topaz was one of those camps.

Since I am doing a lot of research on Utah's Japanese American population, and I had never been, we decided to spend a day at the camp.

This Delta home is a former barracks that Japanese Americans would have lived in.

An actual barracks at the Topaz museum. The barracks were built with flimsy materials and covered with tar paper. In the extreme cold of Great Basin winters--these sucked.


This is the ruins of a garden created by a painter, Chiura Obata, outside of his door.

I found a drain from the latrine area.

What's more American than Coca-Cola? Please note the rusted nails to the side. These were just left on the ground after the barracks were dismantled.

Terra cotta cover for a flue. A flue is part of a chimney. The people only had little stoves to warm their rooms.


I'm in the distance. In the foreground is the Buddhist Temple garden area. Note the large and distinctive rocks in the area.

We found some pieces of china that went together! There were tons of broken chinaware. We pretty much rummaged through their trash piles.

Ahhh, the Great Basin. How'd you like to move from San Francisco to this exotic locale?


Part of the barbed wire fence is still standing.

Being at the Topaz site moved me. I had read a lot about Japanese American imprisonment. It's unlikely that I will ever know what it is like to be falsely incarcerated because of my race, and I didn't really experience it. But just being there--realizing that people lived here and tried to continue on with their lives--was impressive. I hope that this sort of thing never happens again. I hope I have the courage to oppose injustice when I see it.