Tuesday, May 31 Today's History Lesson, Topaz Interment Camp

Where we are staying, Delta, Utah, was the site of a World War II Interment camp for Japanese-Americans known as Topaz.  At its peak, it held 8,200 people...

Today, there is not much left of the original camp but a few concrete footings and some other evidence that it was even in existence, but the locals here have created a museum and have a display of artifacts from the camp, as well as one of the last buildings that has been restored and is also set up to explain the daily life of the internees:

From the website for Topaz:

The camp opened 11 September 1942 although many barracks as well as the schools were not completed. Japanese-Americans from the San Francisco area, who had been housed at Tanforan Race Track since its hasty reconstruction for human inhabitants in March, were transported to Delta, Utah, by train. The population of the camp soon reached about 8,000. Once located, some internees finished building their own barracks and other structures at the site.

Two elementary schools, one junior/senior high school, and a hospital constituted the major structures of the camp. Administration buildings, warehouses, and government workers' housing were located in the first few blocks of the forty-two-block camp. The remaining blocks were for internee housing. Each block had twelve apartment buildings, a recreation room, latrines for men and for women, and a mess hall. The apartment buildings were sectioned into six apartments of different sizes to accommodate families of two, four, or more people. Larger families were sometimes given two apartments.

The detainees were allowed to arrive only with what they could carry- 

We didn't do the same for German residents of the United States, wonder what the people were thinking back in the day, other than unrational thoughts...  Hard to believe it was happening in America. 

Glad I discovered that the camp was here.....  I'll also do Manzanar National Historical site someday, and Minedonka this summer up in Idaho.