Japanese internment

The prison camp on an old Civilian Conservation Corps camp outside of Moab held 56 so-called troublemakers from other camps in 1943.

A gathering of Topaz camp survivors and descendants have come to the Utah desert to remember James Wakasa and the 140 other Japanese Americans who died here.

Eighty years ago, James Hatsuaki Wakasa was killed in a Japanese American internment camp in Utah. His story is one piece of Utah’s history with internment.

The process of getting Amache under the National Park Service umbrella involved years of effort. It means more funding for preservation in the short term. But no matter who administers the site, everyone involved hopes the survivors — and their stories — stay front and center.

It started with a teacher who saw an opportunity to do a living history project and wound up volunteering to keep up the site at Amache for 30 years. Today, historians, survivors and archaeologists are fighting to preserve the history.

The internment of Japanese Americans during World War II is something many don’t know about. The descendants of those imprisoned at Amache are sharing their family stories and helping to shed light on this dark period in history.

The latest Utah news for Friday morning, Feb. 18, 2022.

Here’s a timeline of the major news stories that happened in Utah throughout 2021.

The Topaz Museum removed a rediscovered memorial to a man shot and killed there by a guard in 1943. They unearthed it with a forklift — without archaeologists on hand and without informing former prisoners and their descendants. Some of the former prisoners recently returned to the camp to honor the man who died.

The work “Lost Freedom: Japanese American Confinement in America” brings together the music of Kenji Bunch and the narration of actor George Takei, who spent his childhood in internment camps during World War II. With hate crimes against those of Asian descent making headlines, Bunch calls art and music “our last best hope for coming together.”

In the spring of 1942, official posters went up across the West Coast and Arizona. All people of Japanese ancestry had one week to report to assembly…

Utah’s Governor has declared today, January 30th, Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties. Korematsu was a Japanese American who was interned against his…