On Father’s Day weekend, we feature Jun Dairiki’s memory of her father.
Jun Dairiki was in elementary school when her family was incarcerated in Topaz. Her father, Hatsuki Nakahara, worked as a supervisor of a Topaz farm crew that helped local farmers outside the camp. It was while observing irrigation canals that he came upon the idea of building a fish pond in Topaz.
With the help of volunteers, he created—in a landscape where vegetation other than greasewood struggled to survive—a little oasis outside the Block 20 mess hall. The pond was stocked with catfish from the irrigation canals.
The family would eventually resettle in Idaho. Jun left Idaho after graduating high school and never looked back. Decades later, she would visit Topaz, seeking closure. There, at the site of Block 20, she found the remnants of her father’s fish pond, and began to suspect that closure was something she might never achieve.
Read “Topaz Fish Story.”
The Topaz Stories Team
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Media Coverage:
Read ‘Topaz Stories’ exhibit travels Utah showing human side of WWII internment (KSL.com, May 24, 2024)
Read ‘Topaz Stories’ mines the history of a Japanese American internment camp (ParkRecord, May 18, 2024)
Read Remembering Japanese American Internment–Day of Remembrance (Rosie the Riveter Trust blog, March 24, 2024)
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)