In honor of National Library Week, and in support of libraries and librarians everywhere, we bring you a new story by Jon Yatabe.
When Japanese Americans were forcibly removed to concentration camps from the West Coast in 1942, they were able to bring “only what they could carry.” Most prioritized clothing, bedding, diapers for babies, towels, pots/pans, medicine… Books were a luxury.
So what was Jon Yatabe, a six-year-old bookworm, to do? His family was sent to the middle of nowhere in the Utah desert and housed in a barrack with no furniture but sleeping cots and a pot-bellied stove. There was little to read.
Fortunately for Jon, donations of books began coming in to the camp, and the Topaz Public Library was created in a camp recreation hall. “Reading was my salvation in the three and a half years that I spent behind barbed wire,” Jon writes. “Though my body was imprisoned, there was no limit to where my mind could go through books.”
Read Jon’s story, “Escaping Topaz.”
The Topaz Stories Team
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Media Coverage:
Read Internee’s story told with ‘Topaz Collages’ (Wheel of Dharma, Vol. 5, Issue 3, March 2023).
Watch Topaz survivors tell their stories (abc4 news, 4/22/2022)
Listen to the “In the Hive” podcast with interviews with Ann Dion, Jonathan Hirabayashi, and Topaz survivors Jeanie Kashima and Joseph Nishimura (KCPW, 4/28/2022)
Read How a Utah exhibit about Topaz Camp looks to find empathy in ‘an ugly stain on American history (ksl.com, 4/22/2022)
Read “Topaz Stories rise from the dust,” (Department of Culture & Community Engagement, 4/2022)
Listen to KQED Forum, Day of Remembrance interview with Ruth Sasaki, 2/15/2022
Listen to Max Chang and Ruth Sasaki interviewed (KRCL RadioActive, 2/9/2022
Read On Topaz Stories and ‘Authentic Voice’, the Discover Nikkei interview with Ruth Sasaki (10/14/2022)
Listen to Remembering the Japanese American Incarceration, the Topaz Stories podcast with Ruth Sasaki and Jonathan Hirabayashi (6/2/2021)