Topaz

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 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.

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