The Topaz Relocation Center was built deep in the Sevier Desert, some 140 miles south of Salt Lake City and 16 miles west of Delta. Once covered by the ice age Lake Bonneville (the Great Salt Lake is its remnant), the region has been described as a "barren, sand-choked wasteland."

At an elevation of 4,600 feet, average summer temperatures are in the nineties, and a constant wind blows across the ancient lake basin causing intolerable dust storms. With deep frost and snow in the winter, temperatures hover around zero, and it has been known to plunge to minus thirty degrees.

Work on the 19,800-acre reserve began in June 1942. The camp was first known as the Central Utah Relocation Center, later the Abraham Relocation Center and finally the Topaz Relocation Center, named after Topaz Mountain. The camp opened on September 11, 1942, but many of the buildings were not yet completed, and some internees had to finish building their own barracks. The camp housed virtually all of the Japanese Americans from the San Francisco Bay area of California. The population peaked in March 1943 at 8,130, and Topaz became the fifth most populous city in Utah until its closure on October 31, 1945.

Topaz was known as a relatively peaceful camp, but the internees’ frustration flared on occasion. Guards had been regularly firing warning shots at internees, and on April 11, 1943, a military policeman shot and killed James Hatsuaki Wakasa, claiming that the elderly Issei (first-generation Japanese) was trying to escape. Wakasa was walking toward the barbed-wire fence but unable to hear or understand the guard’s warnings. The autopsy, however, showed that Wakasa had been shot in the chest while facing the guard tower. The internees demanded that they be allowed to hold the deceased man’s funeral on the spot where he was killed and that the WRA include Japanese-American leaders in the investigation. When the WRA first denied these demands, the operations at Topaz ground to a halt. The funeral was eventually allowed, but the accused guard was found not guilty and news of the acquittal was censored from the camp newspaper to avoid further strikes or massive rioting. The administration tried to place restrictions on the use of weapons, but a month later, a guard once again fired a warning at a couple strolling near the fence.

Life at Topaz eventually settled down and the internees went on with their daily lives. They spent their time cultivating gardens, attending school, participating in recreational activities and working. The living quarters were crudely constructed barracks made of pine planks and tarpaper with sheetrock lining the inside walls. The flimsy barracks, heated by coal stoves, provided little protection against the extreme weather of the semi-arid desert. The first snowfall after the internees’ arrival was in October and some of the apartments still had no windows installed.

The central area where the internees lived was one square mile surrounded by barbed wire and seven watchtowers. Administration buildings, warehouses and government workers’ housing occupied several of the forty-two blocks that made up the camp. Two elementary schools, one high school and a hospital were the largest structures within the camp. The remaining blocks were for internee housing. Each block had twelve barracks, a recreation room, separate latrines for men and women and a mess hall. The barracks were sectioned into six apartments of different sizes that housed two to four people. Larger families were sometimes given two apartments, but the only furnishings they received were army cots, mattresses and blankets. Internees made tables and shelves out of scrap lumber they found discarded around the camp.

Some of the buildings at Topaz were brought from nearby Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps. The buildings used as the Christian and Buddhist churches came from the Antelope Springs CCC camp, and others came from the Black Rock CCC camp. The headquarters building of the Buddhist Church of America was brought to Topaz from San Francisco.

A unique feature of Topaz’s postal system involved an elaborate address scheme devised by the administration apparently to make the camp seem more like a regular town. All the roads were named after gemstones and plants. Each address included a four-digit block and barrack number plus an apartment designation. So the address for Apartment A, Barracks 11, Block 39 was 6411-A Juniper Street, Topaz, Utah.

To beautify their flat, barren surroundings, internees designed ponds and ornamental gardens with trees and other vegetation. Over 7,500 trees and 10,000 shrubs were planted but none could survive the heat, wind, and alkaline soil.

A large portion of the acreage outside the fenced central area was used as farmland so that the internees could raise some of their own food. Outside the fenced area internees cultivated the agricultural fields; developed its irrigation; and operated the farm nursery, a chicken farm, a turkey farm, a cattle ranch, a hog farm, a farm equipment storage yard and a farm workers’ kitchen.

Others worked within the camp in the mess halls or low-level service and administrative positions, which paid $12 a month. Doctors and skilled workers were paid $16 to $19 a month. A group of Japanese American miners were employed by the Dog Valley Mine, and buildings were moved there to serve as housing for the miners. Topaz had two publications: a camp newspaper, the Topaz Times, and a literary and arts magazine, Trek. In addition, internees could obtain passes to shop in the nearby town of Delta, and some even found work there.

The residents of Topaz made much use of football and baseball fields, basketball courts, and numerous activities within the central area of the camp. Ninety miles away, the former CCC camp at Antelope Springs was converted into a recreation area, providing a pleasant escape from the dusty flats of the camp. Youth groups, such as the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, participated in organized camping, swimming, and hiking at Antelope Springs, which was located in a pinyon and juniper forest. The internees could also get passes to hike in the mountains, including the 9,669-foot Swasey Peak

In January 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced the formation of a Japanese-American combat unit. To determine the internees’ loyalty, the WRA subsequently administered a questionnaire to all individuals age 17 and older. The two primary questions asked if they were willing to defend the U.S. by serving in its military and if they would announce their allegiance to the U.S. and foreswear any loyalty to the Japanese government. But divisions about how to deal with the questionnaire soon erupted among the internees, causing at least some anguish for most people, especially the Issei (first-generation Japanese). Since the Issei were denied U.S. citizenship, answering yes to question 28 would leave them without a country. The confusing nature of the questions caused internees to organize protests, and they circulated a petition demanding the restoration of rights as a prerequisite for registration.

After the protest, the questionnaire was revised, and those who were considered loyal were given the opportunity to leave the camp to work in the Midwest or East Coast or to volunteer for the Army. But those who answered no to both questions were considered disloyal and transferred to maximum-security facilities, such as the Tule Lake Segregation Center. The majority of people at Topaz (89.4%) answered yes to question 28, and of those, 105 eligible volunteers left immediately for active duty. In all, 472 Nisei (second-generation Japanese Americans) from Topaz were inducted into the armed forces.

But many internees were reluctant to leave Topaz because of the overt racism they would face on the outside. They felt it was too risky to take what little savings they had and leave their families. By early 1944, only about 2,500 internees had left Topaz, and by the fall the WRA began to pressure internees to move out and find work. The community was wracked with tension as to whether it should cooperate or resist the WRA. But when Japan surrendered in August 1945, the government enacted plans for the closing of the camps, and roughly 60% of the Topaz internees eventually returned to the Bay Area. Topaz was formally closed on October 31, 1945.

No buildings are left at Topaz except for their foundations and the original asphalt and gravel cinder roads. In 1976, the Japanese-American Citizen League erected a large concrete and rock-veneer monument in the former surplus equipment yard. Another monument with engraved directions to the camp also stands in a city park in Delta.

Beckwith, Jane and Allan Kent Powell, editor. "Topaz Relocation Center," Utah History Encyclopedia, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994.

Burton, Jeffery F.; Farrell, Mary M.; Lord, Florence B.; Lord, Richard W. Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites, Western Archeological and Conservation Center, National Park Service, Publications in Anthropology 74, 1999.

Guide to the Records of the United States War Relocation Authority Central Utah Project, 1941- 1945, University of Washington, University Libraries, Special Collections website: http://www.lib.washington.edu/specialcoll/manuscripts/finding_aids/WRA.html#a3

Millard County Website: http://www.millardcounty.com/topazcamp.html

Niiya, Brian. Japanese American History: An A to Z Reference, 1868 to the Present, New York: Facts on File, 1993

Taylor, Sandra C. Jewel of the Desert: Japanese American Internment at Topaz, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Uchida, Yoshiko. "Topaz: City of Dust," Utah Historical Quarterly 38 (Summer 1980).

Reprinted with permission from "Echoes of Silence:  The Untold Stories of the Nisei Soldiers Who Served in WWII" with thanks to the AJA WWII
Memorial Alliance educational project who produced the CD.