Topaz Stories (Traveling Exhibit)

Topaz Stories: Remembering the Japanese American Incarceration

Now on display at the Summit County Library Kimball Junction Branch

Summit County Library presents the Friends of the Topaz Museum’s Topaz Stories: Remembering the Japanese American Incarceration, a Utah Arts & Museums Traveling Exhibition, from Monday, April 29 through Saturday, June 1 at the Summit County Library Kimball Junction Branch. The exhibit captures personal stories of Japanese Americans who were incarcerated in Topaz, Utah during World War II because of their ancestry.

The Friends of Topaz is an informal, grassroots group based in the San Francisco Bay Area, where most of the Topaz incarcerees were from. Founded in 2013 to promote and fundraise for the building of the Topaz Museum in Delta, Utah, FOT seeks to promote awareness of the wartime incarceration through the preservation and sharing of these stories, and to illustrate the human cost of injustice in very personal terms.

From 2018-the present, the Topaz Stories Project has gathered about 80 stories from Topaz survivors or their descendants. From this collection, stories were selected for the Utah Arts & Museums’ Traveling Exhibition Program.

About Utah Arts & Museums and the Traveling Exhibit Program

Utah Arts & Museums’ Traveling Exhibit Program is a statewide outreach program that provides schools, museums, libraries, and community galleries with the opportunity to bring curated exhibitions to their community. This program is supported in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. For more information on participating in the program, please contact Fletcher Booth at fbooth@utah.gov. Additional information on the programs and services can be found at artsandmuseums.utah.gov.