Utahraptor State Park holds a darker history
Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune
Director Claudia Katayanagi, left, is joined by State Senator Jani Iwamoto as they tour the stark surroundings of a former isolation camp near Dalton Wells Road outside of Moab, Utah. The camp will be memorialized within a new Utahraptor State Park planned for the area.
“The point of bringing them here is these were people who were saying, ‘Hey, you guys are stealing our food. Hey, what about our civil rights?’” According to Claudia Katayanagi, who directed A Bitter Legacy, a documentary about the Japanese camps, and visited the site with us. “Anybody who started to resist, they wanted to get rid of them so they didn’t incite other people.”
While it only operated for about six months, at its peak there were about 50 people confined there, kept under tight supervision of armed guards.
“In a sense Moab became a symbol of controlling the inmates,” Katayanagi told me. “When they brought men here there were four guards to every person. If you wanted to go to the bathroom you had to take a guard with you. In this camp you have to speak English, you could not speak Japanese.”