Topaz

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, ordering the removal of all residents of Japanese ancestry--some 110,000 in all--from the West Coast. Topaz is their story. Written, directed, and narrated by Ken Verdoia, this powerful documentary uses contemporary interviews and archival film footage and photographs to trace one of our most shameful portraits. It began at the Tanforan racetrack in California, where Japanese Americans occupied stalls formerly used for horses for some six months before their removal to Utah--to Topaz, the "jewel of the desert". In Topaz, and nine other camps, the Japanese Americans would remain until the summer of 1945. Looking back, author Mine Okubo refers to the period as a "Holocaust of my mind and my spirit." Surrounded by barbed wire, towers with armed guards (one elderly man, James Wahasa, was shot while walking near the fence), and the omnipresent fine white dust that wormed its way into everything, it is an astonishing testament to the fervent humanity of this group of people that they survived--and even went to war to die for the country that had forsaken them. An outstanding documentary, highly recommended for medium to larger public libraries and schools. (See ANY WOMAN WORTH HER SALT for availability)