Camp life at Topaz settled down and residents continued the routine of cultivating gardens, attending classes at schools or the recreation halls, and working. In 1943 residents with sponsors were encouraged to leave the camps and move farther inland. But the camp didn't close until October 1945. The buildings were then dismantled; some were moved to other locations, leaving cindered roads, foundations for latrines and mess halls, and an episode that sullied the history of American democracy and its Constitution.

In 1976 the Japanese-American Citizen League erected a monument near the site of the camp. On 10 August 1988 President Ronald Reagan signed a redress bill into law, issuing an apology to those interned and calling on Congress to budget compensation for the survivors.

See: Leonard J. Arrington, The Price of Prejudice: The Japanese-American Relocation Center in Utah during World War II (1962); Allan Bosworth, American Concentration Camps (1967); Roger Daniels, Concentration Camps of North America, Japanese in the United States and Canada During World War II (1981); Yoshiko Uchida, Desert Exile (1982); Michi Weglyn, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America's Concentration Camps (1976).

Jane Beckwith