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In 1942 shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, over 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry were forcibly removed from California, Oregon, and Washington and confined to relocation centers. One of these relocation centers was the Topaz Relocation Center located on 17,500 acres in the middle of the Sevier Desert just outside of Delta, Utah. Until the camp closed in Oct. 1945, over 8,000 men, women and children lived, worked, and went to school there; over 100 of its residents volunteered for and served in the U.S. armed forces.
What was it like to be a resident of one of these relocation centers? School yearbooks and literary magazines written and illustrated by Topaz residents offer insight into the life, activities, and feelings of the Japanese Americans held there from 1942-1945. These and other items housed at Utah State University Libraries were digitized as part of the Topaz Japanese American Internment Camp Digital Collection.
A note about terminology:
Relocation centers were the official term used by the War Relocation Authority, but they were also known as internment camps. Both terms are euphemisms that do not fully capture the reality of life as a Japanese American resident during World War II. Utah State University prefers to use internment camp in item descriptions, but users will see reference to both terms throughout this digital collection.
Browse these suggested items:
- Trek, a quarterly literary magazine written and illustrated by camp members; includes stories, poems, and drawings.
- Issues of Topaz Times
- Issue of All Aboard
- Images and illustrations
- Tanforan Assembly Center materials and images
- Guidebook to the Central Utah Relocation Project in Topaz, Utah
- Posters and signs
- Ramblings, school yearbook for Topaz students
- Text from memorial services for former Topaz residents who died in action
- Letter to the editor of the Herald Journal written July 13, 1944 by Laura Merrill, a Logan resident then working at the Topaz Center as its librarian
- Personal Justice Denied, a substantial report on the findings and recommendations of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. It includes many letters, testimonies, and other documentation about the relocation.
- Executive Order 9066 leading to relocation of Japanese Americans
- Executive Order 9102 forming the War Relocation Authority
- Civil Liberties Act of 1988
- War Relocation Authority reports and documents
- Central Utah Final Accountability Report
- List of babies born at Topaz
Related Websites:
- Convicting the Innocent: Japanese American Youth at Topaz (USU Digital Exhibit)
- Topaz Museum
- Topaz Times newspapers, 1942-1945 (Utah Digital Newspapers)
- Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites (National Park Service)
- Teaching with Documents: Documents and Photographs Related to Japanese Relocation During World War II (The National Archives & Records Administration)
- A More Perfect Union: Japanese Americans & the U.S. Constitution (Smithsonian National Museum of American History)
- Children of the Camps: The Documentary, One of the six people interviewed was interned at Topaz, Utah when he was four years old (PBS)
