Matthew and Malia are on spring break, so today we took an outing. We drove to Delta and visited the Topaz internment camp site and museum. The forced gathering and movement of hundreds of thousands of people of Japanese descent away from the west coast just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 is not something I learned about in school. In fact, I had no idea it had even occurred until I was an adult. And I’m not the only one. This egregious violation of freedom is not one that is taught in the schools, at least none that Kevin or I or any of our children have attended. It is also one of those things that should not be forgotten. A full two thirds of those who were forced to leave their homes, jobs, possessions, and everything they knew were American citizens. None of them had done anything wrong or given any indication they intended to do so. Their only crime was having Japanese blood and heritage.
The museum is pretty new. It opened in 2015. The internment camps (Topaz is one of ten) existed from 1941-1945, so this is a story that has been waiting a long time to be told. And while the buildings on the actual site were all dismantled and sold off after the closure of the camp, the gravel roads, cement foundations of the sturdier buildings and a variety of other landmarks remain. We didn’t realize that we would be able to drive and walk through the real site, all of which is open to do so. There are signs detailing what each section was used for and we were able to get a really good idea of how big the camp was. It was bigger than we realized, although still much too small for the 8300 people it housed. It was also very windy and cold, one of the weather extremes that happens in our desert climate.
The museum held many items and one of the things that struck me was how the people interred there used whatever they could find to create objects both useful and beautiful. They repurposed shipping crates into furniture and made beautiful art out of the tiny shells that are evidence of an ancient sea covering our state. While their situation was difficult to say the least, they created as much of joy and beauty as they could.
These are stories that should not be forgotten. When I take a good look at the world we are living in, I desperately want to think that such violations of freedom won’t happen again in our country. Although there are times when I doubt, ultimately, I have to let hope take the reins and trust that as long as we remember the mistakes of the past, we will be less likely to repeat them.
