Topaz 1942-1946
Central Utah WRA Relocation Center
Fifteen miles west at Abraham is the location of the bleak desert
site of a concentration camp, one of ten in Western America, in which
110,000 persons of Japanese ancestry were interned against
their will during World War II. They were the victims of wartime hysteria,
racial animosity, and economic opportunism on the West Coast.
Confined behind barbed wire fence and guarded by armed sentries and
held for no justifiable reason, the internees, two-thirds of whom were
American citizens, and the majority of whom were women and children,
not only endured the bitter physical discomforts of the desert heat
and cold, but sustained a shocking affront to their sense of justice and fair
play and human dignity. May this grim episode of basic American
principles gone astray remind us to work for understanding and
goodwill and justice in an enlightened America today.
The former residents of Topaz remember with grateful appreciation the friendliness and
understanding with which the people of Delta received us during the period of our trial and dispair.
