The site of the Central Utah Relocation Center (Topaz) is nationally significant as the location of one of the ten relocation camps created for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. After President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, the U.S. military forcibly removed more than 120000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast and detained them in a system of assembly and relocation centers. Carried out in the months following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, these actions reflected wartime hysteria, racist sentiment, and the military's inability to gauge the loyalty of Japanese Americans. Topaz is significant for its association with US military history (World War II on the Home Front), politics and government (the relocation decision), US constitutional law (the protection of civil liberties during wartime), ethnic heritage (Japanese American history), and social history (history of minorities in the US ; history of civil rights). The period of significance, 1942-1946, spans the wartime use of the site. Three factors distinguish Topaz from other relocation centers. First, two internees, Fred C Korematsu and Mitsuye Endo, were involved in landmark court cases that challenged the exclusion and relocation of Japanese Americans on constitutional grounds. Second, Topaz exemplifies the efforts of Japanese Americans and WRA authorities to make the best of a difficult and undesirable situation, resulting in what historian Sandra C Taylor has termed a state of "uneasy coexistence. " Third, Topaz exemplifies Japanese Americans ' cultural response to relocation. Internees engaged in a variety of artistic endeavors in order to pass the time and ameliorate the oppressive conditions. Musicians, writers, landscape architects, and other artists created beauty and found outlets for expression under the most difficult of circumstances, thereby enriching the life of all internees and creating a lasting record of the Japanese-American experience at Topaz. - NRHP