Editor’s Note: Chizu Omori is a Wakasa Memorial Committee member. James Hatsuaki Wakasa probably would have been astonished by the recognition and appreciation events attendees bestowed upon him in April in San Francisco and Delta, Utah. Wakasa was murdered at age 63 by a soldier in a watch tower at the Topaz (Central Utah) concentration […]
RABBIT RAMBLINGS: Events honor James Wakasa, inmate who was killed at Topaz, but questions remain about future of his memorial
June 8, 2023 by Leave a Comment
Wakasa remembered in Utah, 80 years after fatal shot in concentration camp
May 11, 2023 by Leave a Comment
TOPAZ, Utah — A set of solemn and respectful ceremonies permeated through the Central Utah breeze April 22 under dotted clouds over the former Topaz concentration camp and the Topaz Museum in Delta, Utah. They served as a contrast to the sudden and violent death of Japanese immigrant James Hatsuaki Wakasa 80 years ago, […]
Topaz survivors, descendants rankled by Topaz Museum Board’s outreach efforts
August 4, 2022 by 1 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 […]
Topaz Museum seeks public input to guide preservation and future of Wakasa Monument
May 12, 2022 by Leave a Comment
DELTA, Utah — The Topaz Museum Board announces the launch of the Topaz Community Outreach Project, as part of its effort to preserve and interpret a recently discovered stone monument, first erected in 1943 in honor of James Hatsuaki Wakasa. Wakasa was a Japanese American man unjustly imprisoned (along with nearly 11,000 others) during World […]
Report from Topaz
December 9, 2021 by Leave a Comment
On November 30 and December 1, 2021, an expert National Park Service team was in Delta, Utah at the invitation of the Topaz Museum to conduct a condition evaluation of the Wakasa monument and site. This is a report of that evaluation and concurrent ceremonies conducted by the Wakasa Memorial Committee (WMC), as seen through the […]
Love and compassion
December 9, 2021 by Leave a Comment
As I read about the circumstances about the unearthing of the Wakasa monument, I am saddened by some of the inflammatory language of the past four months surrounding the event and the innuendo demeaning the character of Jane Beckwith and the Topaz Museum Board. For nearly four decades, these are individuals who have been the […]
Wakasa monument unearthing a ‘slap in the face’
September 16, 2021 by Leave a Comment
To All Concerned, Despite the personal request of a decades long financial supporter of the Topaz Museum to fund a ceremonious, archivally professional excavation of the long buried stone monument, Jane Beckwith (Museum Director), the very next business day, hired her trash haulers to dig up and move it to her private museum. That personal request […]
Wakasa Memorial Committee ‘stunned’ by Topaz Museum Board’s ‘crude and unprofessional’ unearthing of monument
September 16, 2021 by Leave a Comment
Sept. 7, 2021 Dear Topaz Museum Board President Jane Beckwith and Board Members Lance Atkinson, Scott Bassett, Lorelei Draper, Rick Okabe, Hisashi Bill Sugaya, and Teresa Thompson: The U.S. Department of the Interior has designated the Topaz Relocation Center (“Topaz”) as a National Historic Landmark (NHL), the nation’s highest and most coveted historic status. Topaz […]
LETTERS: JA ‘offended’ by ‘desecration’ of James Wakasa’s ‘final resting place’
September 2, 2021 by Leave a Comment
Editor’s Note: The following letter was sent in response to the column entitled “The ‘desecration of sacred ground’ at Topaz” that appeared in the Aug. 19, 2021 issue of the Nichi Bei Weekly. Dear Editor: I have just learned they discovered the secretly buried James H. Wakasa memorial monument. Mr. Wakasa was a neighbor of […]
Wakasa Committee asks for professional excavation where monument was unearthed
The Wakasa Memorial Committee has asked the Topaz Museum Board to carry out a professionally-led community archaeology excavation of the site where the Wakasa monument was unearthed by the museum last year using a forklift. Artifacts were left behind and the hole where the monument was dug out was covered with backfill, according to a […]