The Children of Topaz: The Story of a Japanese-American Internment Camp, Based on a Classroom Diary by Michael O. Tunnell and George W. Chilcoat. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, many people saw the Japanese-Americans as a threat to national security. The solution our government came up with was internment camps, one of which was in Topaz, Utah. All people of Japanese descent were relocated from the West Coast. It did not matter if they had been made citizens or were born here in the United States, they still had to move to the camps. Using one classroom's diary, complete with drawings by the students, the authors have provided us with a look into daily life in the internment camp. It is refreshing to see the determination of these children and their teachers to carry on a normal life in the face of adversity. The most amazing thing to me was that despite being forced into this lifestyle by the government, the people of Topaz still fully supported the United States and did everything they could to help the war effort. My only complaint about this book is not with the subject matter or how it was written, but with the presentation. Each section is headed by a photo of one of the pages from the classroom diary, the text is then reprinted below the picture. I found the text in the photos readable and the reprinting unnecessary. Then in the main body of each section further detail was given to each statement in the diary. Essentially you read the same thing three times. Despite this minor annoyance, I found this book to be a fascinating account of a little known event in US history.
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