hospital, the military police station; to the south a fifteen-acre community garden plot, playing fields (of raked dust), and the cemetery that was never used for the 144 prisoners who died during the life of the camp; their bodies were sent to Salt Lake City for cremation and their ashes held for their families to claim after the war. Around the perimeter of camp, every inch of it, a tall barbed wire fence. Around the perimeter, every quarter mile, watchtowers with searchlights and armed guards. Pinned to the lapels of the prisoners arriving at Topaz: identification tags. The first two hundred prisoners arrived, by train, on September II, 1942. Then five hundred prisoners on September 16. Then five hundred prisoners a day until October 16. All told more than eight thousand prisoners in five weeks. Each contingent of prisoners greeted by a drum and bugle corps at the front gate, Among the prisoners: Shirley Temple's gardener,
* On June 25, 1943 the first graduation class in Topaz High School history conducted its commencement exercises on the plaza in front of the high school building. It was windy. It was always windy, says Hope. The graduating class entered the plaza to the strains of the English hymn "Jerusalem," based on a poem by the mystic genius William Blake. After the Pledge of Allegiance, and the playing of the American national anthem, and a prayer led by a Protestant minister, Mr. Joseph Tsukamow, and songs by the German composers Johann Sebastian Bach and Richard Wagner and the Polish composer Frederic Chopin, there was a flurry of speeches, and translation of them into Japanese by graduating senior Motoichi Yanagi, and presentation of the 216 degrees, and then the class sang the alma mater (.. .from far and wide we've gathered, and made now into one, .. ), and then the choir sang "Jerusalem" again and marched off w a reception in Dining Hall No. 32. So ended the first year of Topaz High School in Topaz Internment Camp, Utah. Soon thereafter the 1943 yearbook was published. Ramblings, it was called-the school's mascot being a ram-and along with its accounts of the doings of the dance committee and the newspaper staff and the thespian club and the choir and the Future Farmers of America chapter and the home economics club and the basketball team, there are pages and pages of photographs of and notes on the seniors, one of whom was Hope, and 1spend hours and hours in these pages, staring Winter 2004-05
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