Sometime - somewhere in the desert of Nevada - in August.
We occupied our time in Austin, Nevada by going out to see their "Castle," and getting a burger at the local food truck. They have a gas station that has a monopoly on all things. They have the only place to eat in town, the only fuel, and the only groceries. Not strong on the grocery aspect, but the hamburger was delicious.
Champs Food Truck had the US 50 slogan on it.
The
gas station sign – yes, it is still pretty expensive here.
They had these signs on all the posts through
town.
Check out the
last little blurb in the blue oval.
Social
Distancing Since 1862.
Here is their “Stokes Castle,” referred to by the Stokes
family as the “Tower.” It is three stories and once had balconies all around
and fireplaces on all floors and even had plumbing. A mine developer and railroad magnate built
it in 1897 as a summer home for his two sons and they used it for two months
and it has remained vacant ever since.
I
would have to guess that this is some sort of thing used in mining. There are several mining artifacts in this
area – and the Stokes family were miners.
The
view from the castle, or tower, was spectacular!
After leaving Austin, Nevada we landed in Ely,
Nevada. Staying with US 50 on the way. We stayed at the Koa Journey in Ely and it was a pretty nice park with
an amazing view of the mountains all around us.
They had some pretty cool teepees set up and a miners cabin. Not sure I would have rented the miners cabin
and am positive I would not have slept in a teepee with this heat, but they
were pretty neat.
The
sites here were very nice.
Our
view of the mountains on the first day we were there.
Our
view of the mountains on the second day.
The smoke from the Delta fire has caught up with us again.
The
miner’s cabin. So cute.
These
beautifully made teepees. Again, look at those mountains.
Ely is not a real big town. We only went to eat one morning at this
Mexican restaurant across from a McDonalds.
Many travelers were passing through here and heading to the salt flat
races somewhere in Utah. I really wish I had
known about that, we may have checked it out.
Anyway, we are sitting and eating breakfast and watching the people
trying to go to McDonalds. The drive-thru
was 15+ cars long and people kept trying to go inside, but the inside wasn't
open. One guy even got out of the
drive-thru line and went to the door.
Now the poor guy lost his spot in the drive-thru! We decided to time him and see how long it
took for these people to complete their transaction at the Golden Arches. It took that guy 18
minutes. Heck, we had our food and were
comfortably people watching long before 18 minutes after arriving at our place. Finally some people realized there was
another place to eat in town and started walking over or coming to the
drive-thru here. We just watched a while, it was a way to kill some time in
small town Nevada. There are casinos
here, as there are everywhere in Nevada, but that is just not our thing.
There is construction along US 50 here and it is
backed up on the way back to the KOA, so we decided to have Google maps find us
another way back. Well, she took us
through a pretty nice neighborhood and then had us turn onto what turned out to
be someone’s driveway! I am losing all faith in Google maps as our journey
continues. She even had a name for the
street/driveway. I mean really? We could have been shot had we been in Texas!
We left Ely and headed further down US 50 to
Delta, Utah. It is a bigger town and they had an internment camp, Topaz,
there during WWII. We went out to the site
on Sunday, because the actual Topaz museum in town was closed. It is one square mile
and they housed 8,100 Japanese, mostly Japanese Americans, there during the war
hysteria after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It was awful! There was really nothing left but a couple of slabs and a monument, but the reality of so many is such a small area was terrible. We loaded up to leave
Monday morning and decided we had to go see this museum before we left the
area. I mean, this is not something I
learned much about in school. I am not sure
any of us heard very much about this terrible thing that our government did to
its own citizens not so many years ago. We ended up spending over two hours
here. The curator was really knowledgeable
and the exhibits were very well done. They
even had a portion (one half) of an original barracks from the camp and a mock-up
of one of the rooms. These people were required to leave, or sell within one
week, everything they owned. They could only
bring what they could carry. I cannot even begin to imagine business owners
selling everything for pennies on the dollar, homes just left behind to be
repossessed. They were actually allowed to take everything they could and go to the east coast on their own dime and start
over, but they could not stay in the west as our racist regime at the time considered people of Japanese descent a threat to the
war effort. It was such a short notice not all of them were able to just pick
up and move. These people were so
resilient! They made the most out of what they had. They were housed in blocks of twelve barracks
with varying numbers of people. You got allotted
space according to the size of your family. One specific family of eight was
allotted two rooms. They started building things out of left over lumber from
the building of the complex, like furniture, partitions for their rooms, and
they even began finding tiny shells in the sand and making items to beautify
their homes. These camps were home for three and a half years. Those that had
the resources to keep their belongings on the west coast returned home to
everything ransacked, picked over and torn up. Some relied on good friends to
help with their belongings while they were away. These were the fortunate few.
All in all this was an horrific act on the part of
our government. Many years later, a commission was appointed to investigate this tragedy in
1980. In 1982 the Commission found that there werre three causes for the injustice "race prejudice, way hysteria and a failure of political leadership." Yet, the official apology and reparations of $20,000 to each survivor was not issued until 1988 by then president Ronald Reagan. A Japanese American member of
congress at the time said, “You
can make this mistake, but you also have to correct it — and by correcting it,
hopefully not repeat it
again.” We can only pray we will not let this happen ever again.
It started with this notice to all people of Japanese decent on the west coast.
Actual portion of
one of the original barracks – just tarpaper on the outside.
A replica of the interior of one of the rooms. They made curtains out of flour sacks. The only items provided were the beds, matresses and the pot belly sove.
This is how the
camp was laid out. Remember 8,100 people at one time (the camp's peak population) and a total of 11,212 recorded residents in one square mile. This camp was occupied from September 1942 until October 1945. And that is just this camp, there were nine others.
The camp owned 19,800 acres of land, some of this land was grabbed by eminent domain. They were able to become self sufficient within one year. They grew crops and raised animals to feed all of the prisoners.
The only person to successfully challenge the constitutionality of confinement was a young woman who transferred from the Tule Lake Internment Camp to Topaz. Mitsuye Endo, an American citizen, spoke no Japanese. She grew up a Methodist. Her brother was serving in the Army. In 1942, she protested that the government had no right to detain her without a trial. Officials offered to release Endo if she stayed outside of the exclusion zone. She refused, remaining in camp while she took her case to the Supremem Court. The court's ruling was announced on December 18, 1944: "Mitsuye Endo should be given her liberty."
If my memory serves me, there were four other lawsuits, but Mitsuye Endo was the only successful one.
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