The Murder, the Museum and the Monument

In April 1943, James Wakasa was shot and killed by a guard while walking near the edge of the Topaz Relocation Center, a Japanese American internment camp in Utah. After the shooting, fellow prisoners erected a monument in Wakasa’s honor, which was buried over time. Decades later, two archaeologists rediscovered the monument, but it was excavated—disrespectfully and without the involvement of Topaz descendants—by the museum tasked with preserving the site’s history. For High Country News, Kori Suzuki explores the aftermath of the monument’s discovery, and how, more than 80 years later, Japanese Americans continue to fight to honor their history and confront the silence surrounding it.

UKAI READ BECKWITH’S EMAIL SLOWLY. She was shaking. Tears leaked from her eyes.

She thought about the actions of the federal government back in 1943, in the days after Wakasa’s killing — how they seized his body, controlled what the public knew and ultimately, in her view, tried to erase the memory of the killing by pressuring the camp to demolish the monument. In the museum’s actions, she saw the same patterns of violence emerging.

“It was really, really traumatic to think that something that was so precious to us was pulled out without telling us,” she said. “It was really a heritage crime.”