INTRODUCTION
In the last few months, "This Week" reporters have been travelling across the United States on historic U.S. Route 50. This week we make our stop just outside of Delta Utah - at the site of a World War II Japanese internment camp. It's a sad chapter in American history, yet rarely mentioned in history books -

One hundred twenty thousand people of Japanese ancestry were imprisoned in United States internment camps during World War II. As we hear from VOA-TV's Deborah Block, the people in that camp suffered the high price of prejudice.

NARRATOR
These are the remnants of the Topaz Japanese Relocation Camp outside Delta, Utah. For more than 50 years, they have stood as a testament of the forced incarceration of people of Japanese heritage during World War II. 76-year-old Grace Oshita lived in the camp as a teenager.

GRACE OSHITA
"It was funny, but when we got to Topaz there was a Boy Scout troupe with a large banner, and of course, the drum and bugle corps was going to welcome us there. And the banner said, "Welcome to Topaz, the Jewel of the Desert."

NARRATOR
On December 7, 1941 the Japanese government bombed American military forces at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. People of Japanese heritage in the U.S. were suddenly considered a security risk. Two months later the government issued an order forcing more than 100-thousand people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast - where most of them lived -- into internment camps. Two-thirds were American citizens, including Grace.

GRACE OSHITA
"We didn't even know whether we could stay in this country."

NARRATOR
They were given only a few weeks notice and had to sell almost everything they owned. They could take only what they were able to carry. Grace went to Topaz along with her stepmother and grandmother. Her father was sent to another camp until authorities allowed him to join his family a year later. Grace and her father wrote letters to each other while he was away. But they weren't private because government censors scrutinized mail in the camps.

GRACE OSHITA
"I found that one of my letters, especially this one, had been cut out for censorship. I didn't really know what I had written for them to be so critical about what I had written."

NARRATOR
On this now tranquil land, more than eight thousand people were forced to live in the camp, which became bigger than most cities in Utah during World War II. And life wasn't easy.

Grace and others in the camp lived in crowded barracks with thin, tarpaper walls. The buildings contained several small apartments with no running water.

GRACE OSHITA
"One family was expected to live in one room. We found out that it was just a bare room with just two lights hanging from ceiling."

NARRATOR
The people in the camp made furniture from scrap wood. The apartments were stifling in the warm months, and freezing during the colder ones with only a pot-bellied stove providing heat. The lack of privacy in the apartments was apparent in other places as well including the latrine.

GRACE OSHITA
"We found that the partition between toilet bowls were only elbow high when we sat. And so if we wanted to, we could go to the latrine to visit with our friends and have conversation."

NARRATOR
Yet despite the hardships, the residents turned Topaz into a thriving community. They took part in music and sports events, attended parties, joined church groups, and went to school.

The people interned in Topaz were not allowed to take photos. But artists in the camp drew and painted pictures of everyday life there. Shells found in the sand were made into brightly-colored jewelry. Grace was part of a group that played traditional Japanese instruments.

Even though there were guard towers, security was minimal in the camp. And both the administrators and residents of Topaz often ignored the boundaries of the barb wire fences. Grace remembers taking walks outside the camp, and with permission, was even allowed to go shopping in town.

GRACE OSHITA
"We were not treated unfairly, brutally. The facilities were hard to take but the people were very nice."

NARRATOR
Jane Beckwith is a high school teacher in Delta, Utah who is working to keep the memory of Topaz alive. She wants to preserve the land where the camp once stood.

JANE BECKWITH
"This looks like a home made fly swatter. I would imagine that the flies and mosquitoes were probably equally bad."

NARRATOR
And she has turned one of the barracks into a museum.

Jane Beckwith
"We are a democracy and yet we incarcerated…120-thousand total people who had not shown disloyalty to this country…We aren't supposed to do that in a democracy."

NARRATOR
Jane's father published the local newspaper during World War II, and photographed students for the camp's high school yearbooks, which included pictures of Grace.

After graduating from high school, Grace worked as a secretary at the camp elementary school. Adults were encouraged to find work at Topaz and received small wages. Some were even employed outside the camp like this man who worked for Jane's father at the newspaper.

JANE BECKWITH
"It was difficult for him to go back to camp everyday. He would stay. He slept on a cot in the newspaper office. And he would sleep there Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night and then he'd go back to camp to his family through the weekend. And because he was paid more than the Japanese were paid at camp, the camp charged him rent."

NARRATOR
After three years Topaz closed at the end of World War Two. Besides the museum, several other barracks were later moved into Delta. This one became a garage and still has the name of the someone at the camp who had carved their name in a door.

More than 40 years later, the U.S. government issued an apology to the people interned in all the relocation camps and paid each of those still living compensation of 20,000 dollars.

Grace says she is not bitter about her experience at Topaz, but feels a mixture of anger and sadness.

GRACE OSHITA
"We were naturally born United States citizens. But we were treated differently. But we would sit back and say, "I guess it's wartime and we do have Japanese blood in us so what can we do?"

NARRATOR
Deborah Block, VOA-TV, Delta, Utah.

Anchor lead out: But not all people of Japanese heritage from the West Coast were put in relocation camps. Many Japanese American men served in the U.S. armed forces and fought for the allies during World War II.

For more information on this story see:
Topaz Camp - http://www.millardcounty.com/topazcamp.html
Civil Order 5 - http://www.millardcounty.com/civilorder.html
Images from Topaz - http://www.lib.utah.edu/spc/photo/9066/topaz.html
Relocation of Japanese-Americans - http://www.lib.washington.edu/exhibits/harmony/Documents/wrapam.html