Located behind a frail barbed wire fence fifteen miles out from the remote town of Delta, Utah, the Topaz internment camp is utterly isolated from the rest of the state. Topaz was an American concentration camp where approximately 9,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans primarily from California’s Bay Area were held during World War II. Open from September 1942 until October 1945, daily life in the Topaz internment camp was characterized by an attempt to maintain some sense of normalcy despite severe restrictions and unfair treatment.  The main living area of Topaz was a 640-acre compound with rows of barracks that contained living quarters, communal bathrooms, and recreational areas. Topaz also had two elementary schools, a high school, and a library. Teachers were often camp residents or local adults. Students who graduated from Topaz High were sometimes allowed to leave Topaz to attend colleges in the East. The efforts to promote education despite incarceration reflect the attempts to maintain normalcy for Japanese people living in Topaz.  Recreational activities in Topaz included participating in cultural associations, sports teams such as basketball and baseball, sumo wrestling, arts and crafts, and even the making of the traditional Japanese dessert mochi to celebrate the Japanese New Year. Many people in Topaz exhibited their creative work in art and hobby shows, which displayed traditional calligraphy, sculptures, painting, and jewelry. Many pieces of art from Topaz are still around today, showing the lasting impact and endurance of those who were in Japanese internment camps.  Life in Topaz was recorded in the newspaper Topaz Times. Written by people in the camp, the paper documented news in Topaz including weather, events within the camp, new constructions and developments, new arrivals of people, sporting events, school, and recreational activities. This newspaper, with frequent updates about life and events within Topaz, is an excellent source of information about daily life behind the barbed wire.  The lives of those forced into internment at Topaz were drastically altered, but many tried to maintain some sense of normalcy for those three years in order to survive. Today Topaz is gone, with only the foundations of barracks and some fencing indicating it was once an internment camp. It is important to remember the stories of those who were in Topaz to commemorate a darker side of Utah’s and the United States' history, to honor the resilience of those incarcerated, and to give a voice and identity to those who were once silenced. 

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In 1969, the Salt Palace Convention Center was built. While the Salt Palace is now a historic building in Salt Lake, its creation destroyed the Japanese community that once stretched across 100 South in Salt Lake City. Now, only a small section of 100 South, west of the Salt Palace, claims the honorary title “Japantown Street.” Annexed and quiet, the Salt Lake Buddhist Temple and the Japanese Church of Christ are the last remaining landmarks to survive the community that lasted for a century.

Japanese immigrants came to Utah in the late-19th Century. First as Mormon converts, and later, as railroad, agricultural, and mine workers, the immigrants settled in Salt Lake City. In response to the growing Japanese community, Edward Daigoro established the E.D. Hashimoto Company near 100 South and supplied Japanese immigrants with imported food items and clothing. Additionally, the E.D. Hashimoto Company connected workers with new job opportunities as gang workers to the Denver, Rio Grande, and Western Pacific Railroads.

For easier access to Daigoro’s company, many Japanese immigrants moved and settled near or on 100 South in Salt Lake. The community’s popularity grew and by 1910 there were over 2,000 Japanese people in the area. Like many immigrant-labor populations, the community’s gender balance initially skewed heavily male. Slowly, Japanese men brought their wives to Salt Lake from Japan as they decided to make Salt Lake their permanent home. As more Japanese settled in the area, more community buildings began to be built. By 1918 both the Japanese Church of Christ and the Salt Lake City Buddhist Temple had been established. In addition to those still-standing remnants of the community, a Japanese school, a marketplace, a studio for Obon dance and kendo lessons, and two successful newspapers helped ground the growing Japanese community and give them a place they could call home.

As early as September 1942 after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, over 11,000 Japanese-Americans were relocated from San Francisco and other places in the Western United States to the Topaz Internment Camp near Delta Utah. Although the relocation camp in Topaz wasn’t officially closed until late 1945, Japanese residents were encouraged to leave Topaz and move farther inland. Many of these Japanese-Americans followed that direction and moved to Salt Lake City. Despite the displacement of Japanese-Americans from the West Coast during World War II, the Japanese in Salt Lake were not relocated, though most lost their jobs. Thus, the movement from Japanese in Topaz to Salt Lake ultimately tripled the population in Salt Lake City’s Japantown.

The Japantown Street community not only survived, but grew during World War II. So, how did a community of thousands of people become lost to Utah’s history? It wasn’t until two decades later. When plans were made to construct the Salt Palace in 1969, several members of the Japanese community assimilated into the wider Utah population with most of them choosing to stay in Salt Lake. The beginning of the Salt Palace’s construction forced the final members of Japantown out, leaving the street and the two religious buildings to tell the story of a once vibrant community.

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