This past week, President Bush signed legislation setting aside $38 million to preserve reminders of a dark period in American history.

The money will finance a grant program to save and restore 10 internment camps in which Japanese-Americans were imprisoned during World War II. Among the designated sites is Topaz, near Delta, Utah. The Topaz Museum Board hopes to use the grant, along with private donations, to build a museum and education center.

The only sign of the camp now is a monument that has been the target of vandals. It is truly an endangered piece of Utah's -- and America's -- history.

These camps need to be preserved to remind us of the time when Americans allowed fear and racism to override the principle that all are created equal. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order that took 120,000 people of Japanese descent -- roughly one-third of whom were not citizens -- out of their homes on the West Coast and into holding camps solely because of their race. Many in America believed that they presented a risk of espionage or sabotage on behalf of their ancestral homeland, or that they might join with any Japanese invaders who could come ashore. An invasion was thought to be a real possibility, given the country's unpreparedness for war.

Ironically, Roosevelt had no problem with German-Americans or Italian-Americans running around free during the war. He even appointed a man of German descent, Dwight D. Eisenhower, as supreme commander of the Allied forces attacking Hitler's Germany.

Adding to that irony, Japanese-American soldiers, many recruited from the camps, served with distinction under Eisenhower. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team -- known as the "Go For Broke" -- became the most decorated unit of World War II after vicious combat in Italy and France.

Those who were forced to leave homes and businesses behind took only what they could carry to the camps. Conditions at Topaz and the other facilities have been described as harsh; some internees were even shot by camp guards for getting too close to the fence.

In 1988, 42 years after the camps were shut down, President Reagan signed a letter of apology, and the government subsequently paid reparations to many displaced families.

These steps are positive, but it is also important that the camps be preserved. It is good to be discomforted by the nation's abandonment of its values in the 1940s and to recognize that under the right conditions it could easily happen again. The problem of how to balance liberty and security when faced with possible annihilation is one for every American to ponder. We should get a firm fix on our values and take a lesson from history.

After World War II, Europeans preserved Nazi death camps, leaving a tangible reminder of the unthinkable. While the internment of Japanese-Americans does not rise to the level of genocide, Topaz and the other camps do serve to remind us that America, even in times of crisis, should be a place where one's actions, not race or religion, defines friend and foe.