When he was 56, Chiura Obata — already recognized as a gifted landscape painter known for beautiful vistas of California — moved with his family to Utah, but not by choice.
The move in 1942 was a forced exodus from the Bay Area to the Topaz War Relocation Center near Delta. Topaz was one of the internment camps the U.S. government opened to detain Japanese-Americans during World War II, imprisoning people for no reason other than their Japanese heritage.
The Obatas lived less than a year at Topaz, but the experience had a major effect on his painting and drawing — as can be seen in a major touring retrospective of Obata’s work, now open at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts.