Ten years ago, the Topaz Museum Board raised money to restore this tar-paper recreation hall and move it to Delta, Utah. (Topaz Museum Board)

When 92 acres of Utah's former Topaz Relocation Center went on the market earlier this year, the Delta, Utah-based Topaz Museum Board enlisted the aid of the Conservation Fund, a nonprofit based in Arlington, Va., to purchase the land in order to protect it from development. As the 60th anniversary of the camp's closure on Oct. 31 nears, so does the groups' fundraising deadline for the $250,000 purchase.

The Topaz Museum Board has sent letters to former internees and their families, and Jane Beckwith, the board's president, says that the response has been very positive, with donations ranging from $3 to $15,000. The Conservation Fund has asked the National Trust for Historic Preservation for a $10,000 grant.

The 92 acres will add to the 522 acres that the board already owns, bringing it to within about 25 acres of owning the entire square-mile living area that housed more than 8,000 Japanese Americans from September 1942 until October 1945. "You can understand so much about internment just by walking around out there," Beckwith says.

While none of the original buildings remain on the site, there is still plenty of evidence of the internment camp. Walkways and rock gardens are still visible, and ground where the barracks sat is still compacted. "The foundation for the washroom and mess hall are still there—you can see how it was," says Grace Oshita, who was interned at Topaz. "We were always called evacuees," she says. "What were we being evacuated from?"

After restoring a Topaz recreation hall in 1995, the board began purchasing pieces of the former camp in 1998 to prevent development. There are already two post-war houses on the property under contract, and more could have been added, Beckwith says. The board plans to move the houses once the sale is complete in early November.

Preserving the country's 10 internment camps has become a greater priority in recent years for organizations such as the National Trust, the Conservation Fund, and the National Park Service, which Congress commissioned in 1992 to conduct a theme study of all 10 camps and other internment-related sites. The museum board also is working with the National Park Service to have the site designated a National Historic Landmark.

"History like that should be kept so it won't happen again," Oshita says.

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