For the month of March, the Emery County Historical Society (ECHS) is inviting all to join them in learning about military necessity versus constitutional rights. This topic will be presented by Elizabeth Blackburn, a senior at Carbon High School.
Blackburn previously brought this presentation in front of the Carbon County Historical Society. Her presentation was a prize-winning entry in the 2022 Utah History Day competition and focuses on the incarceration of Japanese-Americans from 1942 to 1944.
In February of 1942, barely over two months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, former President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. The order required all of Japanese descent to be relocated from their homes in California and areas of Oregon and Washington. They were relocated to government-operated interment camps.
Out of the more than 110,000 captured, more than two-thirds of them were citizens of the United States. The ECHS explained that, of local interest, the Topaz Relocation Camp housed more than 10,000 internees at a remote location 16 miles from Delta, Utah.
Some internees were sent to Emery County to work in Green River at the melon fields. Others worked at the Dog Valley Mine, which is south of Emery, to supply coal for the camp. Coal was also purchased from mines in Huntington Canyon.
This presentation will be shown to all in attendance at the meeting on March 16. The event will be in the Swell Room of the Old Courthouse in Castle Dale beginning at 6:30 p.m. ECHS dues are still only $5 per year.