page_title: Topaz War Relocation Center
section_title: After closing
hierarchical_section_title: Topaz War Relocation Center / After closing
caption_attribution_description: English: This is an aerial view of the remains of the Topaz Internment Camp from 20,000 feet.
context_page_description: The Topaz War Relocation Center, also known as the Central Utah Relocation Center and briefly as the Abraham Relocation Center, was an American concentration camp which housed Americans of Japanese descent and immigrants who had come to the United States from Japan, called Nikkei. 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.
  The camp, approximately 15 miles west of Delta, Utah, consisted of 19,800 acres, with a 640 acres main living area. Most internees lived in the main living area, though some lived off-site as agricultural and industrial laborers. The approximately 9,000 internees and staff made Topaz into the fifth-largest city in Utah at the time.
context_section_description: After Topaz was closed, the land was sold and most of the buildings were auctioned off, disassembled, and removed from the site. Even the water pipes and utility poles were sold. Numerous foundations, concrete-lined excavations and other ground-level features can be seen at the various sites, but few buildings remain, and natural vegetation has taken over most of the abandoned areas.
  In 1976, the Japanese American Citizens League placed a monument on the northwestern corner of the central area. On March 29, 2007, United States Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne designated "Central Utah Relocation Center Site" a National Historic Landmark.
  In 1982, Delta High School teacher Jane Beckwith and her journalism students began to study Topaz. She spearheaded the creation of the Topaz Museum Board in 1983, which oversaw the Topaz Museum, which initially shared space with the Great Basin Museum. Funding from the Japanese-American Confinement Sites organization enabled the Topaz Board to construct its own museum building in 2013. In 2015, the museum formally opened with an exhibition of art created at Topaz, entitled "When Words Weren't Enough: Works on Paper from Topaz, 1942-1945." The museum closed for remodeling in November 2016, and reopened in 2017 as a traditional museum focused on the history of Topaz. By 2017, the Topaz Museum and Board had purchased 634 of the 640 acres of the original internment site.
caption: The remains of the camp as seen from 20,000 feet in 2009
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