Deseret News | Reader comments: Internees recall life in barracks of Topaz

Reader comments
Internees recall life in barracks of Topaz

Vern | 4:08 a.m. Feb. 17, 2008

That was a sad chapter in american history.let's hope that the likes of it never happens again.

c rydalch | 5:08 a.m. Feb. 17, 2008

i used to go with my dad to delivery milk to a camp that housed the Japanese. this camp was out by grantsville, utah or dugway, utah is this the same camp?

Anonymous | 7:27 a.m. Feb. 17, 2008

Our Dad built the home we were raised in from the material he tore down at Topaz. There is a shop in American Fork, the old Jorgenson shop behind Bradshaws Auto Parts built from complete barracks moved from Topaz.

Comments continue below

Dale Peterson | 3:29 p.m. Feb. 17, 2008

Can you possibly live in Utah and not know where Topaz was?

Utah | 4:22 p.m. Feb. 17, 2008

To Dale Peterson: I'm not Japanese and only in doing my work have I encountered people who were there. And, it's shameful that some here in this state have no idea what Topaz was and where it is. It's Utah. The people, the culture. the ....

Anonymous | 6:05 p.m. Feb. 17, 2008

My fother had a farm next to Topaz and we would go over there and pick up what ever we could find. My Dad got a lot of bricks to help with bulding our home. We used to dig up pipe and use it for whateve. Topaz was always an intersting place to go and to here the stories that were told about it and what happend there.

ez8 | 8:20 p.m. Feb. 17, 2008

Sad fact is, we are going to see this again........

"Where Topaz was" | 12:11 a.m. Feb. 18, 2008

Before you jump all over C Rydalch, remember that he was there 65 years ago, and he probably was a small kid at the time.

There are a LOT of people who don't know where Topaz and the other camps were -- the government rushed to clear the land after the war, hoping that people would forget about one of the great blunders that Franklin Delano Roosevelt ever made.

Steve Koga | 7:42 p.m. Feb. 18, 2008

Day of Remembrance marks the February 19th (1942) signing of Executive Order 9066 by FDR which suspended civil rights and lead to the forcible incarceration of 120,000 Japanese-Americans. It is commemorated by Japanese communities across the nation each year (sort of our MLK day). Do a Google search on "Day of Remembrance, Japanese interment" and you will turn up many of the DOR events.

Internment is an extremely useful subject which can teach about race, religion, immigration, identity, but at its core is the question of presidential powers and civil rights.

Faulkner wrote: "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

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