News and Community Behind Barbed Wire: The <i>Topaz Times</i> and Japanese American Incarceration in Utah

On a Thursday in March 1943, Masaomi Yano sat at a table, head bowed as he made a stencil for a mimeograph machine. The twenty-five-year-old California native was translating English-language articles into Japanese for the bilingual newspaper he worked for. Like a typical small-town paper, it included items about a new golf course, sewing classes, and a bridge tournament, as well as a funeral announcement. The newspaper's readers didn't live in a typical community, however. They were confined at the Central Utah Relocation Project, better known as the Topaz internment (incarceration) camp, during World War II.Topaz was one of ten such camps, with others in California, Arizona, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas. They held 120,000 people of Japanese descent who had been removed from the West Coast after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Facing political and military pressure, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the mass evacuation of people—two-thirds of them US citizens—who had violated no laws. Between March and May 1942, Japanese immigrants (Issei) and second-generation Japanese Americans (Nisei) were forced from their homes and placed in crude temporary “assembly centers,” often fairgrounds or racetracks. Between May and October 1942, evacuees were moved to the ten semi-permanent relocation camps, where most remained throughout the war.1The Topaz camp occupied one square mile in the Sevier Desert of Millard County, sixteen miles northwest of Delta, near the tiny settlement of Abraham.2 Topaz was divided into dozens of blocks with military-style barracks, latrines, mess halls, and laundries. Living accommodations were spartan: Each barrack was divided into small “apartments,” bare rooms with a window, wood stove, and light bulb suspended from the ceiling. At its peak, the camp held 8,130 people, who worked as cooks, teachers, nurses, and firefighters and did most other jobs of running the community. People also attended church, played in sports leagues, gave music recitals, and read their local newspaper, the Topaz Times. This population was Utah's fifth-largest city at the time, a city behind barbed wire and watched by Army guards.3At the eightieth anniversary of Topaz's closure, this essay focuses on the intersection of Utah history and journalism history. It shows that Topaz functioned as a community in part because of the Topaz Times. Journalism historian David Paul Nord, who studied the connections between newspapers and the people they served, defined community as “common experience and sympathy, and a deep sense of interdependence,” as well as an “organized, common frame of reference” so people could “share a vision of social reality.”4 Newspapers accomplished this in two ways, Nord believed. They provided information to establish an “authority of facts” and served as a forum for debate and civic participation.5 Debate implied disagreement, which Nord portrayed as a hallmark of American democracy, because “to argue about the state was to be a member of the nation.”6This essay examines how the Times reported and commented on five episodes: setting up camp, the so-called loyalty oath, the killing of a resident by a guard, the military draft, and closing the camp. Through its coverage, the paper helped readers to identify as members of a discrete community, not just people thrown together by circumstance. It provided information, reflected Topaz's variety of voices, and bore witness to trauma. Also, as a Utah newspaper that published 438 issues between September 17, 1942, and August 31, 1945, the Times is worth consideration in its own right as a noteworthy publication in the history of the state.7In telling this history, it is important to consider language. Historian Roger Daniels objected to terms such as “internment” and “relocation,” calling them government euphemisms intended to obscure the lack of legal process. He noted that “incarcerated people themselves sometimes used the term concentration camp while they were in confinement.” Others agreed.8 Author Yoshiko Uchida concluded that “the ‘relocation centers’ are properly called concentration camps. The term is used not to imply any similarity to the Nazi death camps, but to indicate [their] true nature.”9 Utah historian Sandra C. Taylor argued that Topaz was “an armed concentration camp,” or at best, “a concentration camp with a human face.”10 However, many historians have adopted terms closer to those employed by the National Park Service and the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, using words such as “incarceration” and “prison camp” synonymously with “internment” and “relocation camp.”11 This essay follows a similar practice.Japanese American internment has been the subject of vast study. Daniels was the preeminent historian, portraying relocation as the result of racism and virulent nationalism fueled by resentment of Japanese Americans’ economic success. Like the other camps, Topaz was constructed in a remote location “where no one had lived before and no one has lived since,” Daniels observed. “The barbed-wire fences, the guards, and the surrounding wasteland were always there to remind the detainees that they were exiled, incarcerated Americans.”12 Authors Audrie Girdner and Anne Loftis also emphasized racial motivations. “In the West Coast hysteria that led to the evacuation, the Japanese, both aliens and citizens, were lumped together in a general racial indictment.”13 As will be seen, citizenship figured prominently in events the Topaz Times covered.Numerous historians have documented internment in Utah, beginning with Leonard J. Arrington. His comprehensive overview mentioned the harshness of the Topaz site, especially “the wind” and “seldom interrupted whirl of dust,” which turned to “gummy muck” after rain or snow. Arrington portrayed the Topaz Times as integral to community life, as it was “produced by evacuee staffs with a minimum of supervision and no overt exercise of censorship.”14 Uchida, who was incarcerated at Topaz with her parents and sister, described “an artificial government-spawned community on the periphery of the real world.” The alkaline dust was daunting, and she did not appreciate a Times item that told new arrivals they were “Residents, not Evacuees,” who should adopt a healthy “Mental Climate”—exhortations she found “patronizing.”15 A history of Millard County also dubbed Topaz an “artificial community” and remarked that Army recruitment was a “cause of serious unrest among the evacuees.”16 Allan Kent Powell situated Topaz in the context of Utah's role during World War II. The state was critical strategically and logistically, and importing more than eight thousand Japanese Americans added to racial tensions.17Taylor, a University of Utah historian, depicted the makeshift conditions, including that the camp was unfinished as people arrived. Built from pine boards and tar paper, structures had no insulation and “some barracks even lacked roofs,” she noted. Most people at Topaz were from Northern California, and “to people whose homes had been in the moist, green Bay Area, central Utah was a shock,” Taylor wrote.18 Social relations were also disrupted. “The breakdown in family life and the virtual disappearance of the individual home was devastating to women,” she found.19 As people were released, those settling in Utah were often unwelcome, even though the state lay well outside the West Coast exclusion zone.20 Taylor constructed her narratives from the extensive archives of the War Relocation Authority (WRA), oral history interviews with former residents, and issues of the Topaz Times. Taylor was somewhat dubious of the Times, asserting that it “cheerfully recorded” routine events but lacked a strong editorial voice. Still, she said, the newspaper was an “important institution in camp.”21Historians Linda L. Ivey and Kevin W. Kaatz also found that the Topaz Times was important to community life. News articles “detailed housing issues . . . and noted that it was particularly difficult to provide shelter and bedding for the new arrivals.”22 Topaz Museum founder Jane Beckwith explained the connections between Delta and Topaz. Her grandfather Frank A. Beckwith had close ties to the camp. He contributed articles to the Topaz literary journal TREK, and he hosted visiting Topaz Times staffers at the Millard County Chronicle. Beckwith's father hired a young man from the camp to help produce the Chronicle, which often reprinted news from the Times.23Topaz is often mentioned in internment histories because of the prominent people who were there, and curator Kenneth Hartvigsen chronicled the work of perhaps the most famous, artist Miné Okubo. Drawing from her 1946 graphic memoir Citizen 13660, Hartvigsen explored how Okubo used her art to “create a sense of control through creative action.” Internment was a “complicated and sometimes contradictory reality,” and she responded with “a truly radical text” that explored “the complex experience of trauma.”24 Okubo also created illustrations for the Topaz Times during its early life.25Much of the historical record about Topaz has been preserved in personal memoirs, oral histories, and the WRA archives. The Topaz Times is another primary source, often incorporated into secondary research. Histories of camp journalism have emphasized the lack of press freedom because the papers were published under WRA control.26 The most prolific scholar of camp newspapers, Takeya Mizuno, concluded that this was “arguably . . . one of the occasions when freedom of the press sank deepest in the history of the the one Masaomi Yano was at Topaz were even more press freedom in Japanese was always than that in This essay that by how at Topaz to help evacuees into a new did not in a A Japanese American community in Utah, in the part of the with about people outside the camp in The Japanese American forced from its to because it had just hired University of Utah as its The paper, Utah as the Japanese American publication in the The with the camp community, to and new with a for incarcerated at for this are the Topaz Times and WRA from through were the of of internment camp the Utah Newspapers the National and the Japanese American Relocation at the University of The Topaz Times was a of the As a of camp published a newspaper to the evacuees and of and of the Times were one for for a of about Topaz as the camp newspaper was and by They were by a WRA who camp and The was a Utah, native who had worked at He was by A. newspaper and and and as explained in a that they as not Most of the Times were in their to and had journalism had worked on a Japanese American newspaper and was the to for the Times. in he to the as a and up in and 1942, the Times was led by native who before evacuation had been of Her at the Times, was a University of Utah who was also at a paper when he was forced to at had the camp newspaper at the temporary at California, from which Topaz were is Arrington the as with early were to a city in this was the of WRA and the conditions, had the of the Topaz Times contributed to community by information while and Between September and October about five people and they to a new settlement with of The included the how was and the rooms people could their they had to with the The Times told new arrivals to the on of the at a small community sixteen miles of The led the on October and a is the in commented that “to the the of to the in Topaz the of also Uchida that a sat outside her for a before her father a into The was so that in October was there were no in any of the in the Times so were after a with there was no of a reflected in the on that for and of but in there was an for for to in the Delta so the could be to newspaper also played a civic by people to themselves as part of a “In any community, has to work and in a city Topaz this is especially the Times commented in a the paper a that “the but readers to the of by on the of it called for a of in the of and a that those of racial are a just in . . . a young man from a which to Topaz . . . to The Times the as through and and from the paper published a with the The news was into The to a individual the role during early information, and a the paper to Topaz into a as the Times a community, to it early 1943, the War to to for military At the time, the WRA to who could outside the West Coast they could both to Japanese Americans’ so they a that to in the armed of the on This was not at or people, but it both and to to the Japanese could them because them the that they as US had loyalty to a was to that were for and not to in the the had been Uchida called it an and to . . . while Ivey and Kaatz that “the had the of the legal of the internment to the and this the Times provided for two more than two The Times did not with news but and had or at the after the of the an the of who were to for a military that had them and their an that “the were not of own . . . perhaps but “the of the sometimes be He added that to not an The Times on the a of up the and another a to the Roosevelt to the and of Japanese and it freedom of for those a calling of to or and are for the this time, the paper information, and Times by the they People a mess they . . . to the of in to their it that more . . . were the Times published a forum for Times published its own in The was and on the It to “the of the Japanese American but the editorial also from government were from the and and the Army created under The was to racial and to their loyalty as a not just as The and most famous, the in and a as one of the most and of World War II. the Times as that to it be “to one of the of American editorial to calling it “a to the of people in the was in an editorial that the government had in the by which could to the that of the Japanese American people, are to their and life as of and to have live as American A editorial was more that at and because “the loyalty of the people as well as that of the and in is in terms of to The two were by news C. who into He the Army and reported to in was among Times staffers who including Yano and of the that the March 1943, had and at Topaz into a Taylor observed. on an and the of was a who had lived in the for A he had Army during World War and was in before the an before he was near the when an Army in a killing The was to but lay five the the camp, and people the two the Topaz Times had in and published on the after the included an an an on military that had been to through the On told that were the of the it to be an The to the had been by the and that the had not been on its He and the paper published a that the in the did not who to but and were among the staffers at this was a California native who had studied journalism at in 1943, she and the to the the Times told readers that the had been and a at and that military from an it reported that be from the during Most and similar funeral eight and the paper a that they to their jobs there was of life and in their On the of the work Between and people an in the of camp for a that two and a was a with and of artificial the Times most was a that was not by but at the of a of Times had an about when . . . and that the be as they were the to the that to community members and gave them Times staffers were of the many them control the them to have their at a of death another complex The were in a role between the camp population and WRA the paper and provided her history of Taylor that the paper published no about the killing but gave for its extensive news their in to them that they had not the the funeral was it noted the artificial a that the people who had made the and their the Times helped its community with and a after the War to the was made to As with the loyalty this Girdner and Loftis that many young have served had they been but they “the government had no right to them from behind barbed events moved the Topaz from the Millard County that they be The debate about military and the Topaz Times on both of the The paper provided comprehensive coverage, more than items in ten It and provided a forum for was the Times an with a by WRA who called the a for American of Japanese Topaz camp also the that it gave “a that Topaz was an part of the he that the role was to and them while the in which to to and to to the responded with dozens of The Times who was for how they be where they and to their Millard County explained that could a and that local were on about that local has had a for this but he which should be The Times reported from a with who a typical should a to “where he is by an who for He is to and provided for the The he have a and a to Topaz to information, the Times provided a forum for about the It reprinted other including one from the It argued that should be to other Americans but also to Japanese who were placed on a The Times published its own signed and a and and The be the editorial but a from not that is in a the a portrayed a a at a while behind a into a The Times also reprinted from other camp newspapers, which argued that should not have to in were editorial from the in the Army had been in its and but “the to by with other American and be as in the Times, which on the A former had to He that the as a shock,” and to a new life could their in the This reflected about and for a in the was more it that there are those who are or even about the draft, but he told that is with parents were incarcerated at but he that . . . to this The newspaper was led at this by the to in that was young and lacked journalism but she editorial by to those of the government and the The Times also provided a forum for those of Topaz residents, and the were a of civic 1945, the and the to at it was an They about racial and to the West Coast they had homes to The WRA people to that it close the by the of the and for As Taylor was and as it the of the and an The Times to with the camp, its to by the the of the life, it readers on and and them of and other The paper also news of on people to California, one of many on of closing the camp in the Times in Each had a mess and as people were A described “a to close one mess for two people who be with the that their new location be one were including As the made it there not be Topaz had two and a but parents from camp L. that there will be no and them to to as as the Times Utah's general had that Topaz were not to Millard County so that up those have and August in which to moved and the paper people they they be were a as the and to and the Times and an in described in before a in that which he a the WRA in that thousand jobs were with for and help with the Times published items about and from California, to It also provided a of “The relocation of Delta for with evacuees the paper reported in The was and A were for to the West Coast and the WRA was “The of five a or and a will Delta for August with the Times with the for with under and in to the people and California were of The Times reported that a was for into a and it described another where through a of a A reprinted editorial the of who had to the of a and to a by the family of The editorial noted the closing that is a of homes and to Japanese A documented sixteen and the as and It commented on the had that of this had with the of were an The Times reported that of California had to on state This the they or in The paper Topaz who objected that the WRA was on people in a from California, the that the are human are of and have The Times the who to have their for and they be to where they had lived before the Times its of and provided on and it in the of the of a community it had helped The Times also the of those the camp and the as the on October 31, The Times had been part of Utah for but it reflected and preserved the of of people during their in the the paper and a community. As people the paper provided information to help them a new life. It and but it also reported that had been because of was a of camp an early of editorial that the and of Topaz. the loyalty the Times played an and It also provided a forum for The newspaper recruitment as a to but it objected to a Army the the Times had a head and a The on their articles from an and the newspaper to a community from trauma. the the Times to but its editorial a that not racism at the Times provided a forum for about a complex and including to the As Topaz to the Times explained the of of in California, and of of Japanese Americans was an in Utah history. Topaz was to be a but for its it was a community. The Topaz Times published its on August 31, 1945, of the relocation of the The was and no However, Jane founder of the Topaz that one of her in about Topaz was when the of The Times was part of that and its issues that history.