Intermountain Histories

Yukio Shimomura: Topaz Internment Camp

2024-03-18T19:58:54+00:00

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942. This order authorized the forced evacuation of all Japanese descendents into internment camps. Families were forced to leave everything behind to go to an unfamiliar location for an unknown length of time. Yukio Shimomura was a young boy who was sent to Topaz and in 2023 still remembers his experiences.

On December 7th, 1941, the Japanese military bombed Pearl Harbor bringing the United States into the Second World War. On February 19th, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, forcing all people of Japanese descent living on the West Coast to relocate to internment camps. They took only what they could carry and left their homes in May 1942, having no idea where they were going or whether they would ever return. Yukio Shimomura was one of the victims of this order. Prior to arriving in Topaz, Utah, many of the Japanese Americans were held in the Tanforan Race Track in San Bruno, California, where they lived in washed-out horse stables lined with linoleum. Yukio Shimomura explained the experience: “All you had was one lightbulb…. Using scrap wood, many made nightstands and other shelves to hold their stuff. Beds were bags filled with hay, and if you couldn’t sleep on that, you slept on the floor… Lots of lines. Lines, lines, lines for everything. We were only there a short time, but it was traumatic… For those living in the horse stalls, they had it bad; they stunk when they came out… you could separate them from those living in the barracks [by their smell]… we were lucky.” Shimomura and his family stayed at Tanforan for a short time before being relocated to the Topaz Internment Camp near Delta, Utah. They remained there for three years behind barbed wire and armed guards. In Topaz, the Japanese “internees” were separated into blocks and barracks. Each block had twelve barracks, a recreation hall, latrines for men and for women, and a mess hall. The barracks were sectioned into six apartments of different sizes to accommodate families of two, four, or more people. Larger families were given two or more rooms. The six rooms came in three sizes, 20’ by 14’, 20’, or 26’. Shimomura later explained that the walls separating the rooms did not reach the ceiling so that you could hear everything from everyone all the time. He remembered, “there were 300 children born in the camp, so you figure couples realized they had to do what they needed to do.” Privacy was absent in the camp, as there were no doors or stalls in any of the bathrooms or showers. At the camp, many tried to make life as normal as possible. This included working at different jobs around the camp for roughly $14 to $19 a month, depending on the job. Children went to school, played around the camp, and all lent a helping hand in whatever needed to be done. No matter how hard they tried to make life as normal as possible, the internees understood they were not free. “Topaz was chaotic,” Shimomura summarized as he explained the death of an elderly man who did not understand the order given to turn around when approaching the barbed wire fence. After a third confusing warning, he was shot and killed. While this was the only shooting to occur at Topaz, it scarred all who were there. In January 1943, President Roosevelt asked for volunteers at Topaz to serve in the United States Army. Shimomura remembers that all who were at the camp were given a questionnaire to determine their loyalty to the United States, with question 28 asking, “Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor or any other foreign government, power or organization?” If the answer was yes, internees could leave the camp for military service. One hundred and five young men, including some young fathers, signed up to fight and were allowed to leave the camp for the first time. The loyalty of Japanese American soldiers who served in the war raised questions about the purposes of the internment camps. In 1943, many others gained sponsors and were allowed to leave the camp to attend universities or enter employment.

The Topaz Internment camp closed its doors in October 1945, and the barracks were moved by the end of 1947. The Japanese American Citizen League erected a monument in 1976 to commemorate those who had stayed there. In August of 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act that was later enforced by President George H.W. Bush. It issued a formal apology and gave $20,000 to all those who were still alive, like Shimomura, a small compensation for all they had lost and suffered as a result of internment.

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Times in Topaz: Daily Life in Utah's Japanese Internment Camp

2024-02-26T19:11:24+00:00

Utah's only internment camp, Topaz, housed approximately 9,000 Japanese Americans for three years during World War II. People in Topaz attempted to maintain normalcy in their daily lives by having schools, recreational activities, a newspaper, and cultural associations.

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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Dave Tatsuno: Film at Topaz Internment Camp

2024-01-23T05:03:04+00:00

Dave Tatsuno was one of 11,000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans that were held in Topaz Internment Camp in Delta, Utah. His experience was unique in that he recorded some of his family’s experiences through a motion picture camera that he smuggled into camp. While never intended to be a documentary, his compiled film has since been added to the Library of Congress and further brings to light the conditions experienced by the Japanese in Topaz.

Born Masaharu Tatsuno in Japan in 1913, Tatsuno immigrated to the United States with his parents when he was only a few months old. Upon arrival in the Bay Area, and due to a clerical error that not even his family understands, he was given a U.S. birth certificate. At a young age, his mother abandoned his family and returned to Japan, leading him to become heavily involved in the YMCA. He decided to adopt the name “Dave” while in junior high. He married Alice Okada in 1938, and their first son, Sheldon, was born in 1940. Amateur filmmaking became a passionate hobby of his after the death of a close friend, when he realized that film had the potential to metaphorically “bring someone back to life.” Due to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 (in addition to other Japanese imperialist activities) and racist attitudes towards the Japanese, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 in February 1942. This order divided the West Coast into military zones and gave the army authority to relocate civilians further inland. The Japanese were the main group affected by the order. Prior to evacuation and internment, Tatsuno helped his father, Shojiro, operate a dry goods store in the Bay area called “Nichi Bei Bussan.” In order to prepare to move, “Nichi Bei Bussan” had an evacuation day sale, where they were forced to sell their goods at incredibly low prices in order to get rid of inventory quickly. Tatsuno and his family were first held at Tanforan Racetrack and later relocated to Topaz in 1942. Tatsuno, who was familiar with running a business, became one of the managers of the co-op store in camp. While working, he met Walter Honderick, a War Relocation Authority official who owned a camera himself. Honderick encouraged Tatsuno to send for his camera under Honderick’s name. Tatsuno, while on a trip for supplies for the co-op, purchased film for the camera in Chicago. With camera and film, Tatsuno was able to participate in his old hobby again. In interviews, Tatsuno was adamant that his film in Topaz was never meant to be a documentary. Its focus was specifically on his family and friends. Despite that, the film does contain significant and telling scenes. One scene depicts several Japanese men digging a trench outside one of the barracks. Tatsuno’s narration (which was added to the film much later) relates that the men were repairing a broken pipe. This scene depicts the labor that the Japanese were expected to contribute in order to keep the camp running. Another scene, perhaps one of the most significant, shows Tatsuno’s brother, Masateru (or “Tut”) visiting the camp as an American soldier on his way to Germany. In later interviews, Tatsuno described that he found great irony and injustice in the fact that his brother, especially with his position as a U.S. soldier, had to visit his family behind barbed wire. Tatsuno and his family returned to the Bay Area in 1945, where they reopened “Nichi Bei Bussan” and sought to help other Japanese returning from internment camps transition back to everyday life. Tatsuno continued to serve as part of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) and the YMCA throughout the rest of his life. His film Topaz was added to the Library of Congress in 1996. Tatsuno passed away in 2006, but his legacy of recording his experience at Topaz remains.

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Sports in the Topaz Internment Camp

2022-09-19T21:10:31+00:00

To alleviate boredom while interred in the Topaz Relocation Center, the residents organized recreational activities. Some of the most popular pastimes were sports including baseball, golf, and football.

The Topaz Internment Camp was organized in October of 1942 in a desert area near Delta, Utah. The Camp was created to house Japanese Americans, formerly living on the coast of California, after being forcefully relocated during World War II. Japanese Americans were compelled to sell or abandon their homes, cars, and any belongings they could not carry on their person. They first were placed in Tanforan and Santa Anita Racetracks in California in converted horse stables until they were moved again to a more permanent location in Topaz, Utah. Topaz was in operation from September 11, 1942, until October 31, 1945. During that time, the Japanese Americans who lived there struggled to create lives for themselves in this new, remote desert environment. To help alleviate the boredom, Japanese Americans developed several pastimes. Schools were opened, artists taught their crafts, and sports teams were created. Fans followed their favorite teams. Sports and outdoor recreation became very popular, particularly baseball. Topaz was divided into 42 blocks and each block created its own baseball team. Teams would compete against each other, drawing dozens of spectators. The daily sports section in the Topaz Times, the local newspaper, revealed the importance of sporting events at the camp. The Topaz Times included articles about the results of golf tournaments, baseball games, and the high school football team. In addition to local games, the Topaz Times reported on the National Baseball League and other national sporting events. Sporting events in Topaz created strong rivalries between blocks in the camp. The most notable rivalry was between the softball teams. Like the baseball teams, the softball teams were organized by blocks and run by managers elected by each block’s players. Softball games were highly anticipated, and each team would practice for several weeks before the competitions. Unfortunately, with young people constantly leaving for the army, school, or work, fully manning each team was a continual struggle. The High School fielded many teams that students would compete on. The high school football team traveled and played against other local Utah high schools. Players would also compete against their peers, with a senior football team challenging the juniors and sophomores. The high school also had a track team. In the 1944 season, the track team got off to a late start, but was in full swing by May of that year, competing against students at other Utah high schools. The time in Topaz was difficult in the lives of the people sent to live there. But they found ways to go on living. To help make the most of a difficult situation, the residents of Topaz showed their resilience by promoting their love of sports and participating in a variety of recreational activities. Something that started as a way to alleviate boredom became a favorite pastime in Topaz, Utah during WWII.

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Provo and Orem WWII Labor Camps: Japanese-American Internees

2019-02-13T10:52:38+00:00

Due to war-time labor shortages, prisoners from the Topaz Internment Camp helped Orem and Provo farmers harvest fruit, amid discrimination.

After the Japanese military bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, some Americans feared that US citizens of Japanese descent might engage in espionage for Japan. This racially charged wartime hysteria led President Roosevelt to sign Executive Order 9066, which forced those of Japanese descent into prison camps across the country. One such camp was in Delta, Utah. It was known as the Topaz Relocation Center.
World War II labor shortages increased as more Utah men joined military efforts, and state officials and Utah farmers sought workers to fill their places in designated labor camps to harvest various crops. Seeking work opportunities outside of the prison camp, many of Topaz’s internees volunteered to work at these labor camps in the surrounding town of Delta and in the northern Utah towns of Provo and Orem. The Provo camp, located at Ninth South and Fourth East, housed 400 persons and consisted of a temporary tent city where local farmers hired Japanese workers to work on beet farms. The Orem labor camp, located at 950 North and 800 East, was a more permanent site with large barracks and cabins, administrative offices, a kitchen and mess hall, and outhouses. The internees worked in orchards of various kinds. In May of 1943, the first seventeen young men arrived in Utah County to work as farmhands. The Utah Farm Association eventually relocated these hired Japanese American workers to the permanent Orem site shortly after.
Though farmers hired Japanese workers willingly, anti-Japanese sentiments continued among many Utah residents. In 1943, these sentiments culminated in a violent incident involving Japanese-American workers and some white Provo residents. On October 3rd, five white youth, with shotguns and .30 caliber rifles, gathered and opened fire on the Provo labor camp and on local Japanese homes. Three people were struck by pellets, but no one was seriously injured. The attack had been the third of the week, with two previous reports of white youth throwing stones at Japanese workers and quickly escaping in cars. The War Relocation board threatened to remove the workers, and thereby their desperately needed labor, if Provo residents could not tolerate and protect Japanese workers. The residents chose to protect the workers and keep their labor. The five youth were later arrested for their attack.
In the fall of 1944, German and Italian prisoners of war replaced Japanese American and immigrant workers at the Orem labor camp, ending the Topaz prisoners’ connections at the Orem labor camp. But today the Topaz prisoners’ important role in Utah farm labor is memorialized at the Orem Heritage Museum. Though a school now stands on the actual Orem camp site, a sign commemorates Japanese workers and the labor contributions they made to WWII-era agricultural efforts. Residents can visit these sites and see Topaz’s influence far beyond the internment camp in central Utah.
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Willie Ito: From Topaz to Disney

2019-02-13T10:34:59+00:00

Internees at Topaz went to school and participated in all kinds of classes, including art. One art student at Topaz went on to illustrate one of the most iconic Disney animation scenes of all time.

The devastation of Pearl Harbor and the hysteria of the Second World War set the stage for white Americans to indulge their racist attitudes. Despite Japanese Americans showing no verifiable signs of sedition, many American citizens saw them as enemies who could not be trusted. Those of Japanese ancestry who lived along the Pacific coast were forced to enter inland internment camps like Topaz, Utah, for the duration of the war. Despite having had their rights disregarded, many of these prisoners continued to develop their talents. One such prisoner was a boy named Willie Ito, who went on to create a piece of art that would be seen by millions of Americans for years to come.
Willie was born in 1934 and grew up in San Francisco California. One of the most influential experiences in young Willie’s life was going to a movie theater in San Francisco and seeing the film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). It was then that he knew that he wanted to be an animation cartoonist. After President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in February 1942, Willie and his family were interned at Tanforan racetrack in San Francisco. A few months later the government relocated the Tanforan prisoners to a permanent camp in Topaz, Utah. In Topaz Willie went to school and took art classes. While many of the kids liked to play games and baseball after school, Willie liked to go back to his family’s assigned barrack and draw. Willie would draw on the Sears Roebuck catalogs that were delivered every three months, making flipbooks in the margins of the expired catalogs.
Willie and his family left Topaz in early 1945. While studying at Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, Willie landed the dream job of working at Walt Disney Studios. One of his first projects was animating the famous spaghetti scene in the film Lady and the Tramp. Willie also worked at Warner Bros and Hannah-Barbera Studios before returning to Walt Disney to work on consumer products. More recently Willie has illustrated two children's books, Hello Maggie (2007) and Boy of Heart Mountain (2010). These books detail some of the experiences of the people of Japanese descent who were incarcerated during World War II. Willie has chosen to use his artistic skill to educate others on the great injustices done to him and many other Americans of Japanese descent who were here at Topaz as well as the other internment camps across the country.
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Arrival at Topaz: The Gate and Its Meaning

2019-02-13T10:17:11+00:00

The Topaz experience was prefaced by a mixture of welcoming residents and military presence at the camp’s main gate.

On September 11, 1942, the first group arrived at Topaz War Relocation Center. That day, over 500 people of Japanese descent entered in Delta by train and were loaded onto buses that brought them to the internment site. There were more arrivals throughout the three-year period Topaz operated, all of whom passed through this main gate. It was here they were met with symbols of patriotism and signs of welcome. The residents of the internment camp tried to ease the new arrivals’ worries with these attempts; however, the barbed wire fences and guard towers framing the gate in the black desert-scape sent a contradicting message.
The people interned had been brought from homes on the Pacific coast that were exchanged for Topaz’s desert. It was a bleak sight amidst devastating circumstances. One woman, Yoshiko Uchida, noted her appreciation for the Boy Scouts’ effort to soften the arrival experience: “it was such a touching sight to see them standing in the burning sun, covered with dust and making such a determined effort to lessen the shock of our arrival at this bleak desert camp.” Windswept sand from the barren earth scattered about the Boy Scouts bearing instruments. The interned residents had organized a Boy Scout band to welcome new arrivals by song. The Boy Scouts symbolized patriotism to those arriving at the hand of policies that did not live up to American ideals of justice. Eventually, some men within the camp would volunteer for the war effort, enlisting in the segregated 442nd infantry. As the Boy Scout band played, the U.S. military guards stood nearby, holding rifles and kindling fear in the new arrivals.
Beyond the music of the Boy Scout band, those arriving at the camp were also greeted by signs welcoming them into Topaz. These signs had welcoming phrases such as “Welcome to Topaz: Jewel of the Desert” or “Welcome to Topaz—Your Camp.” However, these signs, whether intentionally or not, covered the truth of the internment experience. For example, one sign describes the camp as a “Jewel,” yet residents were forced to live in close quarters, surrounded by armed guards and barbed wire. Describing it as a “Jewel” hides the reality of what it was really like to live there. Another sign, recounted by Uchida, describes Topaz as “[their] camp.” However, the camp was run by the War Relocation Authority, not the residents. It was surrounded by the military and had strict rules and procedures. As one resident described, “rifles were pointed at us, not outward” (Stone). Although the sign claimed that the camp belonged to them, their surroundings told a different story. The desert landscape and military presence sent a message of fear that overcame the tokens of welcome.
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Japanese Youth at Topaz

2018-05-11T20:13:25+00:00

The young, second-generation Japanese immigrants (Nisei) relocated to the Topaz Mountain Internment Camp during World War II faced a unique challenge. Born in American to the children of Japanese immigrants, they were forced to negotiate between being legal citizens and being seen as outsiders. After Pearl Harbor in 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 creating the Military Exclusion Zones along the Pacific Coast. The order pushed 120,000 Japanese out of their homes and into internment camps, including Topaz. The intention was to protect America against any immigrants whose allegiance was still with Japan. The youth were directly confronted with the issue in the form of the Loyalty Exam. Two of the questions read, “Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty, wherever ordered?” and, “Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America . . . and foreswear any form of allegiance to the Japanese emperor, to any other foreign government, power, or organization?” These questions were the basis of the “Yes-Yes” and “No-No” groups that caused division among their age group and all within the camp.
The forced relocation led Japanese young people like Miné Okubo and Yoshiko Uchida to turn to art, journals, and letters to compile the effects the movement had on Japanese family structure and their own dreams of education or social advancement. These forms of communication expressed a worry for their people, confusing and hurt over being sent to internment camps, and the desire to still support the America they had been born into. This extended into subsequent post-war Sansei generations as well. R. A. Sasaki, a third-generation San Franciscan, captured this desire in her short story American Fish. The main character, Mrs. Hayashi, is asked by an old acquaintance, Mrs. Nakamoto, why Mrs. Hayashi’s parents stayed in the United States after Pearl Harbor. Mrs. Hayashi answered simply, “I guess they knew that we, I mean my brothers and sisters and I would never want to go to Japan. I mean we were born here. We belonged here. And they wanted the family to stay together.”
Despite their circumstances, Japanese-American youth held on to the hope of an America that offered opportunity. They created from scratch, along with teachers and administrators, a successful school with limited resources. In fact, many of the students complained in interviews later in life about the lack of credible teachers and resources. The draw to a world they had grown up in, like Yoshiko Uchida who continually applied to go to college while in Topaz, highlighted the difficult situation these Japanese Americans were in. They believed in a nation who could give them everything, but were left to wonder why they were building their own prison walls when they were more than willing to fight for the nation that they were both “born” to and “belonged” in.
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Japanese Internment Experiences in Utah vs. Arkansas

2018-03-14T18:23:41+00:00

Japanese internment is an unfortunately an event in America’s history, too often glossed over. Many people are unaware of the unjust imprisonment of many Japanese families in the U.S. during World War II. No matter the location, Japanese families and individuals experienced hardships in internment camps; hardships that differed depending on the location of the camp.

Following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, President Roosevelt issued executive order 9066, calling for the relocation of Japanese Americans living within the U.S. Following this order, ten relocation camps were created within the United States; eight located in the western region, two in the south. The differences in conditions of camps in the west versus the south can be effectively illustrate by comparing the Topaz Internment Camp near Delta, Utah, to the the Jerome and Rohwer camps, located in the southern Arkansas delta region.
Residents of both Topaz and the Arkansas camps experienced great hardship when faced with climates drastically different from the temperate California environment. The extreme desert temperatures at Topaz frequently fluctuated between below freezing at night to over 90 degrees in midday, which inflicted great hardship upon its residents who were exposed to the elements in partially completed barracks. In central Utah desert, internees were required to perform labor essential to cultivate agriculture in their barren, dusty environment. One resident described this when he stated, “They made cowboys out of the Japanese.”
While Utah internees faced hardships in the form of weather extremities, the plight of Arkansas internees was attributed primarily to their miserable swampy environment; one that was unfamiliar to California natives. The locations of the Jerome and Rohwer camps were outliers to the western location of the other eight camps. These camps were built due to the availability of land that had been abandoned by landowners who were overwhelmed at the prospect and draining and clearing the unrelenting swampland. This feat was left to Japanese internees, who were tasked with the responsibility of draining and clearing the land (Ward).
Japanese internees in Utah and Arkansas also experienced drastically different experiences concerning interactions with those outside the camps. The presence of internees in Arkansas presented a unique problem to the racially stratified Jim Crow South. The sudden appearance of a new ethnic minority in a society previously separated into primarily black and white races, was the source of confusion and objection among many native residents. Fierce prejudice arose among many Arkansas natives, including Governor Homer Adkins.
Despite the compliance of states housing the other camps, Adkins staunchly refused to allow Japanese students to enroll in Arkansas universities, and in many cases refused to allow internees to work on projects outside of the camp (Ward). When referring to the prospect of Japanese working outside the camp Adkins once stated, “I don't mind them leaving to work in other states, but as a matter of policy I am not going to recommend that Japanese work in any capacity in this state." Adkins’s commitment to confine internees in their camps was a prejudiced policy not replicated at Topaz, where students were allowed to attend outside universities, and many workers were granted release to work in areas surrounding the camp in areas as far away as Provo.
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