The Topaz Museum opened in early July last year, hoping to attract visitors interested in the internment camp near Delta between 1942 and 1945.
In its first year, the museum founded by Jane Beckwith saw an estimated 10,000 visitors, she told the Millard County Chronicle Progress. (And slightly under a year, actually, as Beckwith and her team counted the figure in late June.)
Children are guided on a tour of the museum by Topaz Museum Board Member Scott Bassett. The children were among 10,000 visitors the museum saw in its first year. (Topaz Museum)
“We’re very happy,” she said. “We feel like we have had very good visitorship … It is fascinating to meet the people who come.”
Beckwith also said she has been “surprised” at the variety of places people have come from. Some have traveled from places like Colorado, Florida and Massachusetts – and Switzerland and Japan. An estimated 60 percent still make an approximate four-hour round-trip drive, from and to Salt Lake City. Others from Utah come from further away, in Park City. The plurality of the remaining 40 percent have come from California.
Fifteen percent of visitors have Japanese-American ancestry, so they may have a connection to the camp, as Japanese Americans were the prisoners.
“They tell us they feel the museum … is personal,” Beckwith said. “It’s just so pleasant to have someone come to that conclusion. It’s very nice.”
Other visitors may have been referred to the museum from Great Basin National Park, Beckwith said.
Most visitors are couples with church and school groups visiting. One hundred junior high students are slated to conduct chamber orchestra in early October. From California, most folks come in families, Beckwith said.
Exhibits at the museum include a room from the camp, which include the actual chairs from seven-and-a-half decades ago from a Kami family, who was imprisoned at the camp.
Setsuko and Nancy Ogami look at a Topaz Museum exhibit. They were among 10,000 visitors the museum saw in its first year. (Topaz Museum)
“We asked them to describe what their room looked like,” Beckwith added, saying “a lot of primary artifacts” throughout the museum impress visitors.
A video of members of the Kami family talking about their experience, including a Frank, has been another feature visitors have enjoyed, Beckwith said.
When visitors have left the museum, they have had a good experience, and that pleases Beckwith and her staff.
“They seem to leave kind of on a scale from satisfied to interested in learning more, which, that’s perfect; that’s exactly what we wanted people to do,” Beckwith said. “We’re hoping in the future that people will return. We have quite a bit of text in the exhibit and sometimes it’s hard to digest that all in one visit.”
Visitors are surprised at the number of artifacts, Beckwith said.
Folks who come “can understand a part of the state a little better,” Beckwith said.
She also remarked on local familiarity.
”We have so many people come who say they haven’t been to Delta before,” Beckwith said. “It’s kind of odd to hear that, but at the same time, we are happy that they came.”
The museum continually needs more volunteers as tour guides. A shift is two-and-a-half hours long and can be once per week.
A tour guide upon a visit to the museum from the Chronicle Progress provided interesting details about the camp. That included Dave Tatsuno, who filmed life at the camp even though he wasn’t supposed to. Today, his video and the one of John F. Kennedy being shot are the only home films in the Library of Congress, she explained.
Beckwith also noted that the museum relies on donations.
“That’s a little scary,” she said. “We would hope that someone would think the visit was worth $5.”
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