Museum board plans community outreach around memorial
Input from professionals and the general public alike is being requested by the Topaz Museum Board and Wakasa Memorial Committee.
The museum board recently announced its launch of the Topaz Community Outreach Project, as part of its effort to preserve and interpret the recently discovered stone monument dedicated to James Hatsuaki Wakasa. The museum and committee both made announcements via press releases.
The project will officially launch next month, and includes community engagement through online and printed surveys, along with public meetings held in person and online.
“While special efforts will be made to reach former Topaz camp survivors and their descendants for their input, all outreach components will be free and open to the public,” the museum’s press release states.
Wakasa was a Japanese-American man imprisoned during WWII at the Topaz internment camp. He was shot and killed on April 11, 1943 by a sentry guard while he was walking his dog, near the prison fence.
Other incarcerated Japanese-Americans erected the monument in his honor shortly after his death as an act of protest, but were forced to bury it by camp sentries. It remained buried for almost 80 years until its discovery in Sept. 2020. It was excavated in July 2021.
The Wakasa Memorial Committee has since asked the Topaz Museum Board to carry out a professionally-led community archaeology excavation of the site where the monument was buried.
“Artifacts were left behind, and the hole where the monument was dug out covered with backfill,” according to a National Park Service report. The NPS was contacted to conduct a survey of the site in February of this year.
A glass bottom jar, along with 40 cement and stone artifacts were also found on the surface by the NPS, the committee wrote in its press release.
“Without conducting a more thorough excavation with proper documentation led by qualified archaeologists, it is difficult to interpret what was at that site, but it is certain that it contained more than just the monument itself,” the release states.
The committee requested the board in an April 28 letter that the excavation be conducted around Septs 11, 2022, the 80th anniversary of Topaz’s opening in 1942.
A community archaeology project is led by professionals, but invites local people and community members to take part in field work by screening soil, recording data and other tasks.
“Such projects are valuable in drawing out community stories, personal accounts and grassroots knowledge that enhance the site’s historical legacy,” the committee wrote.
Additionally, the Wakasa Memorial Committee requested the Topaz Board to issue regular, public reports with photographs on the conditions of the memorial site and stone.
No public updates have allegedly been made since the NPS issued their report in report in February, the committee cited.
