Most of the people incarcerated at Topaz came from the Tanforan Assembly Center and previously lived in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The extreme temperature fluctuations of the arid area combined with uninsulated barracks made conditions very uncomfortable, even after the belated installation of pot-bellied stoves.

The questions were divisive, and prisoners who were considered "disloyal" because of their answers on the loyalty questionnaire were sent to the Tule Lake Segregation Camp.

The order forced approximately 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent (Nisei) and Japanese-born residents (Issei) in California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska[13] on the West Coast of the United States to leave their homes.

[12]: 19 Topaz was opened September 11, 1942, and eventually became the fifth-largest city in Utah, with over 9,000 internees and staff, and covering approximately 31 square miles (80.3 km2) (mostly used for agriculture).

[12]: 15  Most internees arrived at Topaz from the Tanforan or Santa Anita Assembly Centers; the majority hailed from the San Francisco Bay Area.

[15] A smaller camp existed briefly a few miles north of Moab, which was used to isolate a few men considered to be troublemakers prior to their being sent to Leupp, Arizona.

[17] Most internees came from the San Francisco Bay Area, which has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate, with moist mild winters and dry summers.

[20] Topaz contained a living complex known as the "city", about 1 square mile (2.6 km2), as well as extensive agricultural lands.

Due to harsh weather, poor soil, and short growing conditions, the camp was not able to supply all of its animal feed.

[5] Internment rules usurped parental authority, and teenagers often ate meals with their friends and only joined their families to sleep at night.

[22]: 127  This combined with a lack of privacy made it difficult for parents to discipline and bond with their children, which contributed to teenage delinquency in the camp.

[27] One teacher at the camp art school, Chiura Obata, was allowed to leave Topaz to run classes at nearby universities and churches.

[19] During a rock hunting expedition in the Drum Mountains, 16 miles (26 km) west of Topaz, Akio Uhihera and Yoshio Nishimoto discovered and excavated a 1,164 pounds (528 kg) rare iron meteorite, which the Smithsonian Institution acquired.

[29] In 1943, the War Relocation Authority (WRA) issued all adult internees a questionnaire assessing their level of Americanization.

Two questions asked prisoners if they were willing to fight in the US Armed Forces and if they would swear allegiance to the United States and renounce loyalty to the Emperor of Japan.

Many Japanese-born Issei, who were barred from attaining American citizenship, resented the second question, feeling that an affirmative answer would leave them effectively stateless.

[22]: 149 A military sentry fatally shot 63-year-old chef James Hatsuaki Wakasa on April 11, 1943, while he was walking his dog inside the camp fence.

In response, the administration determined that fears of subversive activity at the camp were largely without basis, and significantly relaxed security.

[33] Chief Justice John Roberts repudiated and effectively overturned the Korematsu decision in his majority opinion in the 2018 case of Trump v.

[5] Numerous foundations, concrete-lined excavations and other ground-level features can be seen at the various sites, but few buildings remain, and natural vegetation has taken over most of the abandoned areas.

[5] On March 29, 2007, United States Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne designated "Central Utah Relocation Center Site" a National Historic Landmark.

[36] In 1982, Delta High School teacher Jane Beckwith and her journalism students began to study Topaz.

Funding from the Japanese-American Confinement Sites organization enabled the Topaz Board to construct its own museum building in 2013.

[38][39] Topaz War Relocation Center is the setting for the 2007 film American Pastime, a dramatization based on actual events, which tells the story of Nikkei baseball in the camps.

[42] Yoshiko Uchida's young adult novel Journey to Topaz (published in 1971) recounts the story of Yuki, a young Japanese American girl, whose world is disrupted when, shortly after Pearl Harbor, she and her family must leave their comfortable home in the Berkeley, California suburbs for the dusty barracks of Topaz.

[43] Julie Otsuka's novel When the Emperor was Divine (published in 2002) tells the story of a family forced to relocate from Berkeley to Topaz in September 1942.

[44] In his poetry collection Topaz (published in 2013), Brian Komei Dempster examines the experience of his mother and her family, tying the history of persecution and internment to subsequent generations’ search for a 21st-century identity.

[28] In 2018, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts exhibited many Chiura Obata's works, including some made at Topaz.