The court ruled the guard was following orders. Which meant someone ordered him to kill randomly.
April 11, 1943: James Hatsuaki Wakasa was killed in cold blood by a guard while walking his dog.
He wasn’t running. He wasn’t warned. He wasn’t anywhere near the fence.
James Wakasa was quietly walking his dog at Topaz, the incarceration camp in the Utah desert where he had been forcibly relocated with thousands of other Japanese Americans.
He was a 63-year-old Issei (first generation Japanese American) who had lived in the United States for more than 40 years. He spoke English. And he was known to be quiet and very likable, while skilled as an accomplished chef.
Twenty feet inside the fence, he was shot directly in the chest by a military guard from one of the towers. He died instantly.
The U.S. military quickly claimed Wakasa was “attempting to escape” by crawling under the fence, even though multiple eyewitnesses and evidences contradicted that claim. There were no signs of flight. No warnings. No threats. Just a fatal shot — and a rush to justify it.
The guard was put on trial, but not in a civilian court. The Army held a brief military tribunal that lasted less than a day. The guard was acquitted.
Topaz residents weren’t allowed to question the ruling. And when they tried to mourn Wakasa by building a simple memorial on the spot where he was shot, the U.S. government ordered it destroyed.
Even Wakasa’s funeral was nearly canceled by military authorities. But over 2,000 people showed up, in quiet defiance. They stood together, grieving the loss of not only a man, but the last hope and illusions of fairness.
Wakasa’s story, like so many others from the incarceration era, was buried for decades. Forgotten, or deliberately left out of the public narrative.
But in 2020, archaeologists at Topaz unearthed a stone — a rough, handmade marker believed to be part of the original memorial built by Wakasa’s fellow incarcerees. After nearly 80 years, the silence began to break.
A single shot killed a man. And what little justice remained.
We remember James Hatsuaki Wakasa today — and all those who suffered in silence.
Because history shouldn’t be erased, or buried, twice.
The Value of Japanese American Life
James Hatsuaki Wakasa’s account reminds us how fragile life and dignity were behind barbed wire. Others, like Shoichi James Okamoto at Tule Lake, paid the ultimate price — shot dead by a guard who was fined only one dollar.