The Japanese American Memorial Pilgrimages hosted a town hall discussing the Wakasa memorial stone Sept. 9 at the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California in San Francisco’s Japantown. The meeting included a statement from the Topaz Museum board announcing future plans and a leadership change for the Delta, Utah-based organization. The in-person meeting, […]
LETTERS: A call for building trust and grieving
September 1, 2022 by Leave a Comment
Dear Nichi Bei Weekly, It is heartbreaking to read of the continued hurt and controversy over Mr. Wakasa’s memorial stone. Especially painful are the continued invalidating messages that only add to the trauma. Forgiveness can only come as a consequence of healing, a conscious choice that cannot be forced, and as an expansion of compassion. […]
The Wakasa Monument belongs back home in Japantown, San Francisco
September 1, 2022 by Leave a Comment
It’s not 1942 anymore; “Shikata ganai” is no longer in my vocabulary. I was four when they put me in that prison camp, Topaz. I’m 84 now. Today I shall fight the injustice/racism before me. Back then, we were apolitical, in survival mode. We were so afraid of our government. Just the labels on cushions, […]
Topaz survivors, descendants rankled by Topaz Museum Board’s outreach efforts
August 4, 2022 by Leave a Comment
While the Topaz Museum board and its supporters would love nothing more than to move forward after a haphazard excavation of what some consider one of the most significant archaeological discoveries in Japanese American history, a vocal contingent of activists, academics and survivors are continuing to demand an ongoing dialogue on their terms. The […]
Long-lost monument brings up a painful legacy for Utah concentration camp descendants
December 9, 2021 by Leave a Comment
Last year, two archaeologists found a monument at a Utah concentration camp that imprisoned Japanese Americans. The prisoners there built it for a man killed by a guard. But earlier this year, the Topaz Museum — built to educate the public about the camp — removed the monument with a forklift. There were no archaeologists […]
Unearthing a monumental controversy: Removal of memorial to Topaz shooting victim enrages community
October 14, 2021 by Leave a Comment
Japanese American community members — including wartime incarceration survivors, their descendants, and allies — are outraged that a monument memorializing an Issei prisoner shot and killed in the wartime Topaz (Central Utah) concentration camp by a United States Army sentry was unearthed this summer from the site of his death near the camp’s security fence […]
RABBIT RAMBLINGS: The ‘desecration of sacred ground’ at Topaz
August 19, 2021 by Leave a Comment
I imagine many of you know the story of James Hatsuaki Wakasa, the man who a sentry killed while Wakasa was walking with his dog along the barbed wire fence surrounding the Topaz (Central Utah) incarceration camp during World War II. This happened on April 11, 1943, during the period when camp inmates were being […]
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On memorializing James Wakasa
Mr. Wakasa was shot by a guard while walking his dog along the perimeter of the fence at the Topaz, Utah concentration camp. Other prisoners created a half-ton, five-foot high, concrete monument to honor Mr. Wakasa and commemorate his death. I assume they created the monument by making a mould in the ground and filling […]