DELTA — Machiko Takahashi remembers little about Topaz Internment Camp. She was 4 when she entered the dusty camp with her family from California. She remembers school, friends, a jungle gym and the vicious Utah desert sand storms.
Tak Kubota remembers quite a bit more. Going into the camp, he was 16. He made friends and had good school teachers during his four-year stay, but he also remembers confining barbed wire and armed soldiers watching them constantly.
On Saturday, about 300 visitors and former internees celebrated the 60th anniversary of the camp's closing with a visit to the desert area 15 miles outside of Delta. The visit also marked a Topaz class of 1945 reunion — the last high school class to graduate from the camp.
For many who were there, memories are dim.
The camp held as many as 8,000 people at a time. But all that remains are concrete slabs and signs here and there indicating where a firehouse once was — a warehouse, a post office and administration building.
The former internees who visited had been children at the time, and their memories are softer and much different from those of their parents.
"The younger kids didn't realize what was happening," said David Takahashi, Machiko's husband. "It was the parents who suffered the most and they never talked about it — it was too painful and too humiliating."
Executive Order 9066 was issued in 1942, putting thousands of Japanese-Americans in 10 internment camps during WWII.
It designated the West Coast as a high security risk area after the Japanese military bombed Pearl Harbor and gave authorities power to curb what they perceived as espionage.
Ted Nagata, who came to the camp when he was 6 years old, said the reason he can talk about it freely today was because his parents never spoke about their experiences.
"As a boy it was somewhat of an adventure; I didn't go through the emotional stress," Nagata said.
Most internees were allowed to come to the camps only with whatever belongings they could carry. Some had as little as three days to sell everything they owned before leaving their homes.
Internees describe the living conditions as small. A barrack was divided into six rooms, and a 20-by-20-foot room would house five people. They slept on Army cots, had one single light bulb and one pot-bellied stove.
Inside there was little privacy, and outside there was little shade for relief from the hot desert days. Frequent sandstorms left the floors of the barracks coated with sand.
"We were citizens, but we were isolated from the community," Kubota said. "You didn't have free movements, and you were guarded by armed soldiers and barbed wire fences."
After Kubota was released, he and his family had to start over. After being in Topaz for four years they had nothing.
"They gave us each $60 and a train ticket," Kubota said. "I returned to San Francisco. My parents had a laundry business and our personal property was held by friends, but they sold it all. We came back to nothing."
Many who visited Saturday were from the San Francisco area, and some came from places as far as Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.
"It's always been my dream to bring my children here with me, and it is an important pilgrimage for me," said Naomi Tsujimura, who was a baby when she lived at Topaz. "It's just mind-boggling to come out here and think that we had lived way out here in the desert."
Aside from the anniversary celebration and class reunion, former internees and members of the Topaz Museum Board dedicated a memorial at the site in honor of those who were sent there and veterans who chose to fight in the war despite their internment.
"I would hope that one of the things we could do is remember the good things — how families can stay together under difficult circumstances, how people can exhibit courage and faith and hope beyond what most of us could probably imagine," said Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert.
E-mail: terickson@desnews.com