This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through student journalism.
The 504 barracks of the Topaz internment camp, a square mile that held more than 10,000 Japanese Americans in the barren desert of Millard County near Delta, are long gone — reduced to remnants of barbed wire and gridlines fused into the dirt.
Eight decades later, as University of Utah students are making a documentary about the camp and the confinement of 125,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry across the West during World War II, the 18th century law used to justify that incarceration is being cited by another president.
“They’re using that law that allowed all the Japanese Americans to be incarcerated,” said Karie Minaga-Miya, whose mother and uncle were incarcerated at Topaz. “They’re using that very same law right now to deport people.”
“That law” is the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 federal statute used in the 1940s to defend the incarceration of Japanese Americans during wartime. It’s now the legal framework to support President Donald Trump’s plans to deport some 250 Venezuelan migrants out of the United States.
(Frankie Brandt) An aerial view of the remains of the Topaz Internment Camp near Delta, Utah, where some 10,000 Americans of Japanese heritage were incarcerated during World War II.
In March, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a law designed to take effect only during a declared war, as justification to detain migrants without court hearings, asylum screenings or other forms of due process, and then remove them from the United States. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said they were being deported because they allegedly have ties to a criminal gang, Tren de Aragua.
The Trump administration has argued that the influx of undocumented migrants into the United States constitutes an “invasion,” the language used in the Alien Enemies Act, which is how the administration is justifying citing it now, according to Matt Basso, an associate professor of history and gender studies at the University of Utah.
The law had only been used before in times when war had been declared, Basso said. “The law has slightly larger parameters in the language, but the U.S. legal system is in significant part built on precedent,” Basso said. “Many people have seen this law as rooted in the World War II context.”
Twice in a week, though, federal judges ruled that Trump can’t use the Alien Enemies Act to detain migrants or or remove them from the United States. U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez in Texas made his ruling on May 1; U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, in the Southern District of New York, made a similar ruling on May 6.
The advocacy group Human Rights Watch reports Venezuelan deportees are facing inhumane conditions at the Center for Terrorism Confinement in Tacoluca, El Salvador. The organization, which has investigated human rights abuses for more than 40 years, reports the mistreatment of prisoners includes prolonged isolation, the denial of due process and inadequate access to healthcare and food.
(courtesy Jeanette Misaka) Jeanette Misaka, 94, stands before a "You Can Do It!" banner. Misaka was incarcerated at Heart Mountain in Wyoming, along with thousands of other Americans of Japanese heritage during World War II.
A warning from history
Jeanette Misaka, now 94, was incarcerated as a child at another camp during the war — Heart Mountain in Wyoming — and she said she sees Trump’s recent deportation actions as an echo of a dark chapter of U.S. history.
“In the beginning, they used the terms ‘relocation, assembly center,’” Misaka said. “That was a euphemism for what really was an American concentration camp.”
Misaka is among several survivors and descendants of those incarcerated who are taking part in a documentary being produced by University of Utah students, “Topaz: A War Within.” She said she’s grateful for the students’ efforts to recognize and amplify her community’s history.
“People forget their history,” Misaka said, “and when you forget your history, you repeat it.”
The student-led collaborative project aims to preserve the memory of a silenced people and inspire viewers to reflect on the horrors of incarceration, said Glen Feighery, an associate professor of communication at the U. and the author of two research articles about Topaz.
Feigerty is working with 28 students on the film, along with veteran documentarian Craig Wirth, best known for his history segments on ABC4 News.
“We honor people when we can amplify their stories, so I’m hopeful that that’s going to be one of the takeaways,” Feighery said. “Narrative in any form is critical for that kind of knowledge, preservation and communication.”
Current events have shown how understanding this history remains urgent, Feighery said. “With historical knowledge, we are in historical times in terms of what is happening politically,” he said.
The students worked in teams, with half of them focusing on research and interviews, and the other on video production. Over four months, the students pored over hundreds of archival photographs, spent more than 40 hours gathering b-roll footage and conducted a wide range of interviews.
One of the first lessons was discovering how much the students didn’t know about Topaz, or about the incarceration of Americans of Japanese ancestry during World War II.
“I never really knew about Topaz, which is crazy because I have lived in Utah my entire life,” said Liliana Anderson, a journalism student and one of the film’s writers. “I never even learned about it in school.”
Crystal Fraughton, a junior in Feighery’s class, grew up in American Fork, a two-hour drive from Topaz. But her own education, she said, largely overlooked the camp.
“I knew there had been a camp in Utah, but I was never taught in depth about it in school,” Fraughton said.
Minaga-Miya said even families with a direct connection to Topaz were often unaware of the camp.
“My mother never talked about it,” Minaga-Miya said. Only when Minaga-Miya attended law school did she learn that her mother had been incarcerated there.
Minaga-Miya said she felt a duty to tell the story now. “I just think it’s part of my generation’s responsibility to speak up for our parents or grandparents who were unable to or didn’t want to,” she said.
(Craig Wirth) Alex Hooper, a University of Utah production student, sets up a camera to film at the Topaz Internment Camp site near Delta, Utah, where some 10,000 Americans of Japanese heritage were incarcerated during World War II. Hooper is part of a class that is making a documentary about Topaz.
Finding sources
Wirth, who had proposed the project as his last documentary before retirement, called the film “one of those 10-years-too-late documentaries,” because many of those incarcerated were now dead. “That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done, it just means it’s going to be more difficult,” he said. “The students have been entrepreneurial in that way.”
The students’ persistence attracted Misaka, along with several second- and third-generation Japanese Americans, as well as Salt Lake City Councilmember Darin Mano.
Mano, a fourth-generation Japanese American, called out the 1940s’ U.S. government’s use of the term “voluntary evacuation,” which he said helped distort the public understanding of Japanese American incarceration.
“‘Voluntary’ implies that it’s something that you choose to do, and it really was more coercive than it was voluntary,” Mano said. “Evacuation is a term we use more often for getting somebody out of an unsafe situation, [but] it was based on fear and racism.”
Anderson said she discovered one source through a fortuitous conversation with her mother’s friend, which revealed a connection to Shauna Nakagama, a Japanese American who witnessed Topaz firsthand during World War II.
Nakagama’s family, Anderson said, moved to Utah before President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which authorized military commanders to enforce the relocation of Japanese Americans, primarily on the West Coast. The Nakagamas were spared incarceration, but not the trauma of witnessing what occurred behind the barbed wire.
Interviewing Nakagama, who shed tears recalling her first visit to Topaz, was emotionally intense, Anderson said. She recalled Nakagama’s words: “After I visited Topaz, I was knocked on my butt. It was like somebody just knocked me out. … There is nothing out there, and I was never the same.”
Students also researched the Friends of Topaz Museum in Delta and documented a 2024 pilgrimage to the site that was tied to the opening of the Japanese American National Museum’s touring “Pictures of Belonging,” at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. That collection, curated by Emily Lawhead, celebrates the work of three Japanese American artists: Hisako Hibi and Mine Okubo, who were incarcerated at Topaz, and Miki Hayakawa.
“It [is] so important to Utah history that we don’t brush this under the rug,” Lawhead said. “The key to that is telling these stories, and if an approachable way to do that is through art, then I think that that is a great tool.”
(Craig Wirth) Sutton Becker, a University of Utah production student, flies a drone equipped with a camera over the Topaz Internment Camp site near Delta, Utah, where some 10,000 Americans of Japanese heritage were incarcerated during World War II. Hooper is part of a class that is making a documentary about Topaz.
Capturing details in plain sight
Jack Hollis, a student and co-producer, said he saw Topaz as a good topic for a film, to capture the power of historical storytelling.
“When I read, it doesn’t have the same impact as when I see it,” said Hollis, who joined the project after completing a documentary last year on Little Cottonwood Canyon. “It’s almost like you’re sitting in the room with them, listening to them tell you a story.”
Hollis and other students traveled to Topaz in March, guided by Jane Beckwith, president of The Topaz Museum. They had one day to shoot, so they worked quickly to deploy ground cameras and drones, Hollis said. With only a few visual markers across a large empty area, the production team focused on the historical details hiding in plain sight.
“It was just ‘film as you go, figure out what you need as you go,’” he said. “We had to get everything then, so we had to be very diligent and specific and not pass up any shot opportunities.”
Visiting Topaz, Hollis said, felt like standing in a graveyard. Cement slabs, rusted nails and barbed wire circling wooden pegs served as the only remaining evidence of the barracks that once housed thousands of people.
“I’m a big World War II buff, so getting to see a piece of history, a pretty big scar on America’s past, was interesting in its own right, but it was also very sad,” Hollis said.
(Craig Wirth) University of Utah documentary production students prepare a camera to get footage at the Topaz Internment Camp site near Delta, Utah, where some 10,000 Americans of Japanese heritage were incarcerated during World War II.
‘A grave mistake’
Though the incarceration of Americans of Japanese ancestry may be dimly remembered by some, Basso, the U. professor, said most people widely acknowledge it as a moral failure.
“Almost all Americans understand, I think, what a grave mistake, in hindsight, Japanese and Japanese American incarceration was,” he said.
But, for advocates like Floyd Mori, former executive director of the Japanese American Citizens League, with acknowledgment must come action.
“It’s critical that we speak out very loudly and to bring other discriminated-against people together to make awareness that this is an act of racism and discrimination,” Mori said. “It was bad when it happened then, and it is bad today to have it reoccur.”
That understanding, Basso said, requires telling the full story.
“Our history as a nation is complicated, and it is important to know because it can serve as a guide for all folks, all Americans, and others as we consider actions today,” he said. “But we have to know the fullest version and not oversimplify.”
The Day of Remembrance, recognized every Feb. 19, honors those imprisoned at Topaz and other camps, and raises awareness of how civil liberties can be compromised in times of crisis, according to the Citizens League. This year, the organization is urging action, noting on its website that what happened to Japanese Americans during World War II, “is not unique.”
“The important element is: don’t let it happen again,” Mori said. “You’re not going to avoid bad things in history unless you understand history.”
A legacy through film
The class is now editing the documentary, assembling interview segments, archival and visual elements and footage from Topaz, and setting it to thoughtfully selected music. The plan is to edit through the summer, with the aim of releasing the documentary on YouTube by August.
Wirth said the documentary has evolved into a vehicle for commemorating lives forever altered by Topaz.
“The mark of success is: did you make anyone who watches it reinforce or change their opinion, or get them talking?” Wirth said. “That’s a good documentary.”
For the students, their excitement for the project is tempered by the importance of the subject.
“It is crazy that a film of this magnitude is being produced by students,” Liliana Anderson said. “It is mindblowing.”
Anderson said the size of the project made her hesitant to join the class. “It was scary at first, because the story is so big,” she said, “but having this many people learn about such an important piece of history is really incredible.”
Student Crystal Fraughton said the project’s goal is more than remembering past events. “It’s not just about knowing the date and that something happened,” she said. “It is important to understand the signs of it and how it happens and what leads to it if we’re ever going to learn from our mistakes.”
Their teacher, Feighery, echoed that sentiment. “History is important,” he said, “and, quite literally, if we don’t know it, we suffer.”
Marissa Bond and Jordan Thornblad wrote this story as journalism students at the University of Utah. It is published as part of a collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune.
XXX wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. It is published as part of a new collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune.
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