The Children Of Topaz

Based upon the diary of a third-grade class of Japanese-American children being held with their families in an internment camp during World War II, The Children of Topaz gives a detailed portrait of daily life in the camps where Japanese-Americans were taken during the war. There are many primary source documents including the children’s drawings, maps of the camp, and photographs depicting the harsh, wartime attitudes toward these families.

In the spring of 1942, under the guise of "military necessity," the U.S. government evacuated 110,000 Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast. About 7,000 people from the San Francisco Bay Area--the vast majority of whom were American citizens--were moved to an assembly center at Tanforan Racetrack and then to a concentration camp in Topaz, Utah. Dubbed the "jewel of the desert," the camp remained in operation until October 1945. This compelling book tells the history of Japanese Americans of San Francisco and the Bay Area, and of their experiences of relocation and internment. Sandra C. Taylor first examines the lives of the Japanese Americans who settled in and around San Francisco near the end of the nineteenth century. As their numbers grew, so, too, did their sense of community. They were a people bound together not only by common values, history, and institutions, but also by their shared status as outsiders. Taylor looks particularly at how Japanese Americans kept their sense of community and self-worth alive in spite of the upheavals of internment. The author draws on interviews with fifty former Topaz residents, and on the archives of the War Relocation Authority and newspaper reports, to show how relocation and its aftermath shaped the lives of these Japanese Americans. Written at a time when the United States once again regards Japan as a threat, Taylor's study testifies to the ongoing effects of prejudice toward Americans whose face is also the face of "the enemy." In the spring of 1942, under the guise of "military necessity," the U.S. government evacuated 110,000 Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast. About 7,000 people from the San Francisco Bay Area--the vast majority of whom were American citizens--were moved to an assembly center at Tanforan Racetrack and then to a concentration camp in Topaz, Utah. Dubbed the "jewel of the desert," the camp remained in operation until October 1945. This compelling book tells the history of Japanese Americans of San Francisco and the Bay Area, and of their experiences of relocation and internment. Sandra C. Taylor first examines the lives of the Japanese Americans who settled in and around San Francisco near the end of the nineteenth century. As their numbers grew, so, too, did their sense of community. They were a people bound together not only by common values, history, and institutions, but also by their shared status as outsiders. Taylor looks particularly at how Japanese Americans kept their sense of community and self-worth alive in spite of the upheavals of internment. The author draws on interviews with fifty former Topaz residents, and on the archives of the War Relocation Authority and newspaper reports, to show how relocation and its aftermath shaped the lives of these Japanese Americans. Written at a time when the United States once again regards Japan as a threat, Taylor's study testifies to the ongoing effects of prejudice toward Americans whose face is also the face of "the enemy."

Like any 11-year-old, Yuki Sakane is looking forward to Christmas when her peaceful world is suddenly shattered by the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Uprooted from her home and shipped with thousands of West Coast Japanese Americans to a desert concentration camp called Topaz, Yuki and her family face new hardships daily.

Mine Okubo was one of 110,000 people of Japanese descent--nearly two-thirds of them American citizens -- who were rounded up into "protective custody" shortly after Pearl Harbor. Citizen 13660, her memoir of life in relocation centers in California and Utah, was first published in 1946, then reissued by University of Washington Press in 1983 with a new Preface by the author. With 197 pen-and-ink illustrations, and poignantly written text, the book has been a perennial bestseller, and is used in college and university courses across the country. "[Mine Okubo] took her months of life in the concentration camp and made it the material for this amusing, heart-breaking book. . . . The moral is never expressed, but the wry pictures and the scanty words make the reader laugh -- and if he is an American too -- blush." -- Pearl Buck Read more about Mine Okubo in the 2008 UW Press book, Mine Okubo: Following Her Own Road, edited by Greg Robinson and Elena Tajima Creef. http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/ROBMIN.html

A moving primary source sheds light on the experience of Japanese American children imprisoned in a World War II internment camp. A classroom diary created by Japanese American children paints a vivid picture of daily life in a so-called "internment camp." Mae Yanagi was eight years old when she started school at Topaz Camp in Utah. She and her third-grade classmates began keeping an illustrated diary, full of details about schoolwork, sports, pets, holidays, and health--as experienced from behind barbed wire. Diary pages, archival photographs, and narrative nonfiction text convey the harsh changes experienced by the children, as well as their remarkable resilience.

A Japanese American family struggles to survive a U.S. internment camp and the prejudice they encounter after their release.