Topaz is a 1945 documentary film, shot illegally by internee Dave Tatsuno (1913–2006),, which documented life at the Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah during World War II. Tatsuno went through a unique and challenging filming process in order to produce his movie due to lack of freedom within the internment camps that hindered his ability to film his experiences.
Picture of Topaz internment camp
Topaz War Relocation Center
The Topaz War Relocation Center, also known as the Central Utah Relocation Center (Topaz) and briefly as the Abraham Relocation Center, was an American concentration camp in which Americans of Japanese descent and immigrants who had come to the United States from Japan, called Nikkei were incarcerated. President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in February 1942, ordering people of Japanese ancestry to be incarcerated in what were euphemistically called "relocation centers" like Topaz during World War II. Most of the people incarcerated at Topaz came from the Tanforan Assembly Center and previously lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. The camp was opened in September 1942 and closed in October 1945.
Hog farm where internees raised pork for the camp's kitchen
Internees clear land for agricultural use.
James Hatsuaki Wakasa and his dog in an undated photograph. A 63-year-old chef from San Francisco, Wakasa was shot and killed by a military sentry while walking his dog inside the barbed-wire fence.
The remains of the camp as seen from 20,000 feet in 2009