''Topaz '' is a 1945

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

, shot illegally (though with the assistance of members of the camp staff), which documented life at the

Topaz War Relocation Center The Topaz War Relocation Center, also known as the Central Utah Relocation Center (Topaz) and briefly as the Abraham Relocation Center, was an American concentration camp which housed Americans of Japanese descent and immigrants who had come t ...

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. Filmed by internee

Dave Tatsuno Dave Tatsuno (born Masaharu Tatsuno August 18, 1913 – January 26, 2006, in California) was a Japanese American businessman who documented life in his family's internment camp during World War II. His footage was later compiled into the film ...

(1913–2006), it was deemed "culturally significant" by the United States

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...

in 1996, and was the second amateur film ever selected for the

National Film Registry The National Film Registry (NFR) is the United States National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB) collection of films selected for preservation, each selected for its historical, cultural and aesthetic contributions since the NFPB’s inception i ...

(after the "Zapruder" film of the JFK assassination). Tatsuno always credited his store supervisor, Walter Honderick, for helping him get the movie camera into the camp. Film was smuggled out of the camp on trips that Tatsuno made to buy merchandise for the store. While images appear to show the internees happy and enjoying their lives, Tatsuno said that they were "hamming it up" for the camera, hiding their sorrow.

References

External links

*''Topaz'' essa

by Karen L. Ishizuka at

*''Topaz'' essay by Daniel Eagan i

America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, A&C Black, 2010 , pages 388-390 * *http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/nikkeialbum/items/3575 through http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/nikkeialbum/items/3617 1945 films United States National Film Registry films Documentary films about the internment of Japanese Americans American documentary films 1945 documentary films Black-and-white documentary films American black-and-white films 1940s English-language films 1940s American films {{WWII-documentary-film-stub

See also

References

External links