Part 1: Cursed Land
We returned to the parched, cursed land where blood was spilled eighty years ago.
We were Topaz survivors, descendants, survivors or descendants of other camps, Utah allies–all gathering to remember James Hatsuaki Wakasa, the Issei man who was shot and killed by a Topaz guard 80 years ago on April 11, 1943.
There was nothing but a vast expanse of cracked ground with occasional patches of dried greasewood, which we carefully stepped around, and an immense blue sky. All barracks, all people, gone–not only us, but those who came before us–and yet the land remained.