Sources & Research
The UDN archive is, of course, only one of many textual and visual archives that can offe insights into the history of Topaz. Because each of these bodies of historical evidence is best viewed in conversation with the others, after one year of posting (and, where possible, during the year), the author will supplement the body of posts with sources from outside the UDN archive, including government documents and propaganda, oral histories, incarceree artwork, memoirs, and video, in order to provide users with a holistic collage of the available primary source material concerning Topaz. It should be noted that this project is not guided by any particular overarching narrative, and that its main goals are to: 1) stimulate engagement with materials available to all yet essentially unknown by the American public; 2) provoke discussion about some of the finer details of the incarceration experience; and 3) conduct new historical research in a transparent, public-facing manner.
Moving beyond the text of the Topaz Times, it should be noted that substantial page space is occupied by hand-drawn text (in English and Japanese), illustrations, and other marginalia, all of which is deserving of our attention. Scholars like Kimi Kodani Hill have already called attention to the substantial artistic capabilities and careers of many Japanese Americans incarcerated at Topaz including the eminent Chiura Obata, who led an art school at the camp. Meanwhile, one of the incarceration period’s most valuable Japanese American-produced narratives comes in the form of Topaz incarceree Mine Okubo’s Citizen 13660, an illustrated memoir that depicts the incarceration experience through Okubo’s hand-drawn cartoons. The parallels between Citizen 13660’s humorous yet critical illustrations and Nobori’s cartoons in the Topaz Times invite particular consideration. Listed below are the various memoirs, archives, encyclopedias and digital collections that inform this project and without which we would be much more deprived of knowledge regarding Topaz.
The Topaz Times Collection | Utah Digital Newspapers Archive
Library of Congress | All Incarceration Camp Newspapers
Japanese American National Museum Collections
Japanese Evacuation and Resettlement Study Archive
Out of the Desert: Japanese and Japanese American Internment During World War II
Miné Okubo, Citizen 13660 (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2014).
Kimi Kodani Hill, ed., Topaz Moon: Chiura Obata's Art of the Internment (Berkeley, CA: Heyday, 2000).