Topaz Mountain, Veterans Day, November 11, 2016

Original post: November 11, 2016

These days the only inhabitants of Topaz Japanese Internment Camp in Central Utah  are fire ants and greasewood bushes which could be mistaken for sagebrush. A few stones and sidewalks that go no where are the only evidence of other inhabitants. Shortly after the election, I stood in the silence of a windless, sun-warmed day, with my best friend, a retired naval officer. We had come on Veterans Day to understand the story of this place.  

Ten thousand people lived here for a period of time. They began arriving on September 11, 1942 with the clothes on their backs and one suitcase each. From the blue waters of the San Francisco Bay to a big blue sky of Utah, families complied with President Roosevelt's Executive order 9066. They sold or gave away everything in their homes in only ten days' time.

I assumed I might tell the stories of people like Chigura Obata, an art professor from  Berkeley who started an art school at the camp. However, the story I uncovered had more to do with the keepers of the history. Two women from Delta, Utah Jane and Janiel, both curators of museums in a town of 3485 people, perceive the experience very differently.

Janiell manages Great Basin Museum which is in a building you might expect in a small town in Central Utah. In what might have been a dime store at one time, now has an accumulation of fossils, dishes, dry goods, barbed wire, maps. Oh, and a small case of artifacts from the internment camp at Topaz. 

​Janiell voice is a gentle, sing song. She tells the story of Shigura Karomoto, a young man remanded to the camp.  or "Shigs" as she referred to him, was a cowboy working at a local farm. While her family scrounged for enough to eat in a small shack on her family's farm, Shigs and the people of the camp "ate as good a diet as enlisted military." They had a hospital at the camp with good doctors, not the "kitchen table doctoring" of the town. She said that the people of the camp who worked were paid just under the rate of military personnel. "The wind blew on us just the same," she said, while searching for a sympathetic ear for the plight of her people. However, the differences were too great for me to feel such compassion for her and her family. 

Next door to the Great Basin Museum, stands a new building of quarried rock and glass, with bold lettering: Topaz Japanese Internment Camp Museum. The feel is very different. It's sacred.

Jane, a tall, stoic-faced woman met us there. She's no-nonsense about her version of the internment camp story. Jane's version is quite different.

She defend's the very fact that 10,000 people came to a place far different from their home in California. She makes no bones about the living conditions and has skillfully compiled information regarding the housing, the latrines, the lines for food. With Jane, I feel the heaviness of U.S. Government decisions to keep the public safe.

People living at the camp made effort to prove their allegiance to the United States. Young men enlisted in the military to prove their allegiance to the U.S. Serving in the 100th Regiment, a band of Japanes American soldiers who were liberating Dachau at the same time that their families were interned at Topaz.  

Upon my return to Salt Lake City,(remember, it is just three days after the election) I notice these posters on the sides of utility cabinets at several street corners. I understand that Mr. Trump wants to institute a registry for Muslims based on the system created for the Japanese Americans who lost so much more than their possessions in 1942. 

​Chiura Obata, as well as many people imprisoned at Topaz discovered the ability to flow with the current of their circumstances. There is a delicate balance to be reached between discipline and dissonance. We are tasked with such a journey now. 

I continue to think about the two women I met that Veterans' Day in November, when the wounds of the election were fresh. They work adjacent to one another, tell their stories and uphold histories that matter, both of them matter. ​ Chiura Obata, as well as many people imprisoned at Topaz discovered the ability to flow with the current of their circumstances. To share bathrooms and living spaces, be kept in areas by barb wire. And yet, Mr. Obata, like so many of the Americans interned at Topaz, sought beauty and  usefulness every day. Some even went so far as to die for our country. 

There is a delicate balance to be reached between discipline and dissonance. We are tasked with such a journey now.