Topaz (1945 film)
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Topaz (1945 film)
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This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 1996.
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Topaz is a 1943-1945 documentary film, shot illegally by internee Dave Tatsuno (1913–2006), (though with the assistance of members of the camp staff), which documented life at the Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah during World War II. Tatsuno went through a unique and challenging filming process in order to produce his movie due to lack of freedom within the internment camps that hindered his ability to film his experiences.
Why It's an Essential Mark in American Cinema
- Immediately after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States government began restricting the movement of Japanese Americans living in the country. Over 1200 Japanese Americans were in custody, and eventually were brought to assembly centers in Washington, Oregon, California, and Arizona, where they were assigned to one of ten relocation centers, or internment camps in California, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, and Arkansas. The Topaz internment camp, officially the Central Utah Relocation Center, covered almost 20,000 acres in Millard County, about 140 miles south of Salt Lake City. Most came from Alameda and San Francisco with Dave Tatsuno and his family being among them.
- At Topaz, Tatsuno became the manager of the drygoods division of the War Relocation Authority's Co-op, and had a camera sent to the camp under his camp. Tatsuno’s Topaz footage is the only color film documenting life inside an internment camp. What he shot was “not a documentary,” he insisted. “I was merely taking family shots.”
- Tatsuno captured many of the same moments that any amateur filmmaker would: church services, birthdays, holidays, fellow workers, family members. But with a limited amount of film, he had to pick and choose what he covered, preediting what to shoot. In Delta, the nearest town, he photographed the main street, a reverend and his family, a hotel that served steak dinners. In the camp he covered traditional methods for making moji cakes, and students in a class in public speaking that he taught. He filmed weather: dust storms, snow, striking sunsets. But Topaz is also a documentary record of a terrible injustice, one reason why it should be seen by the widest possible audience.