After graduation, I worked as a nurse’s aide in the Topaz Hospital. I was shown how to give injections and give meds to patients. But then I had the eye-opening experience of assisting a doctor in delivering a baby. I was only 17 at the time and didn’t even really know where babies came from. I was just shocked!
Once people started getting “permanent leave” to resettle outside of camp, my sister Kaoru, one of her friends and I planned to move to St. Louis to work. Just before leaving, I had to have an appendectomy, so they went on ahead and I joined them a couple of months later. We did housecleaning; and later decided to join a cousin who had resettled in Chicago. In Chicago we worked on an assembly line assembling stove parts. One of my coworkers introduced me to her cousin, who was stationed at Ft. Snelling; and he would later become my husband.
With Topaz about to close, my family returned to the San Francisco Bay Area in September 1945. My brother Walton, who had volunteered for the U.S. Army from Topaz in 1943, was wounded by a German sniper and sent home. En route back to the West Coast, he stopped in Chicago and picked me up. My family stayed in a hostel at Sycamore Church in Oakland until they could find a house in Berkeley.
I ended up working for U.C. Berkeley for 30 years, dealing with insurance and student loan accounting. I had three daughters, and now have several grand- and great-grandchildren. They never ask about camp–although one of the young ones did know about it, but referred to it as a “maternity camp.” I don’t know if it’s because it sounded like “internment,” or if it’s because my youngest brother was born there.
I always try to be positive, and when people ask me how Topaz affected my life, I say that I learned some useful skills there and grew up faster than I would have otherwise—that’s for sure.
About the contributor: Midori Morita Konno was born in Oakland, CA in 1926, the second of nine children. Her father, Tadaaki Frank Morita, was a maintenance man/chauffeur and gardener. During WWII, the Morita family was sent to Tanforan and Topaz. Midori’s older brother Walton joined the 442 and fought in Europe. Midori and her sister Kaoru resettled in St. Louis, then Chicago, but returned to the West Coast when the rest of the family left Topaz and settled in Berkeley in September 1945. She worked for U.C. Berkeley until retirement, and now lives in Union City, CA.
Copyright 2026, Midori Konno. All rights reserved.