by Jon Yatabe
Dorothy and Toto Wind-blown escape from Kansas Gray autumn fields
We had been in Topaz for nearly two years when my mother volunteered to help with the apple harvest in Provo, Utah. We lived in a little tent city beside a small stream, and while the women and old men picked, the young kids played in the yard by the farm house.
Knowing what we longed for, around two o’clock each afternoon, the smiling farmer and his wife would come out with a pitcher of Kool Aid with ice. It was barely sweetened due to sugar rationing but that tart pale green drink with ice cubes was a rare treat for the camp kids. I still like my drinks with very little sugar even now.
The adults worked hard six days a week and on Sunday we were free to go into town. Some of the men had trouble with kids jeering at them and yelling, “Jap!” We never had a problem in Provo or Delta and generally met people like the farmer willing to help us out. One memorable Sunday we went to see “The Wizard of Oz” in town.
I did not know about the movie theater experience in Topaz or in Provo. The apples for the internees is a great story, much appreciated.
I love the comparison of the WofOz’s Kansas tornado to the Topaz dust storms!
The young girl in the Provo tent photo is my late cousin Leiko Joan Yamasaki. Leiko accompanied her father, Frank Taketo Yamasaki to the Provo tent city in the summer of 1943. The woman sitting next to Leiko is not her mother, Toshiko (Kitano) Yamasaki, who had to stay back in Topaz due to morning sickness; her 2nd daughter Taeko was born on February 17, 1944 in the Topaz Hospital.
The Topaz “movie theater” was the Rec Hall in Block 32, the Topaz High School block. Don’t know if movie shows were transferred to the newly built h.s. gym/auditorium in 1944