Camp sheds light on dark past
GRANADA, Colo. — If you aren’t careful on this southeastern Colorado rural highway, you might easily pass the signs leading to a site that marks a dark episode in U.S. history.
But slow down and you’ll find nestled along the Colorado-Kansas border in Granada, Colo., remnants of a gloomy place that even the weeds of the Great Plains can’t cover up: the Amache Japanese- American Relocation Center. Behind the dry brushes sit lonely concrete slabs that once housed makeshift homes, a school, even a dance hall for detainees waiting for the end of the Second World War.
There’s a re-created watchtower where armed guards kept internees behind the gates, and random artifacts scattered through the landscape. They tell a story of Americans imprisoned solely because of their ethnic background after Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Among those detained here were a cartoonist who once worked for Walt Disney and a Medal of Honor recipient who gave his life fighting in the Second World War for the U.S.
From 1942 to 1945, more than 7,000 Japanese-Americans and Japanese immigrants were forcibly relocated to what was then called the Granada Relocation Center. They were part of the more than 110,000 Japanese-Americans ordered to camps in California, Colorado, Idaho, Arizona, Wyoming, Utah, Arkansas, and New Mexico.
An order signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, forced Japanese-Americans, regardless of loyalty or citizenship, to leave the West Coast and other areas for camps surrounded by barbed wire and military police.
At Amache, they lived in an area next to poor Mexican-American farm workers. They tried to go on with life as normally as possible. They produced a newspaper, the Granada Pioneer, which featured the works of detainee cartoonist Chris Ishii. They tried farming, held Christmas block parties and even formed a football team. They lived there even as their sons were drafted into the U.S. army.
On Oct. 15, 1945, shortly after Japan’s surrender, the last detainees left Amache and the site closed. It remained untouched until it became listed on the U. S. National Register of Historic Places in 1994 and a local teacher founded the Amache Preservation Society.
Today, the buildings for the six by seven-metre barracks where families lived are gone. So are the police station, the co- op store and high school. All that’s left are concrete floors and signs that detail what was once here.
A cemetery for the 121 people who died remains. The cemetery includes a monument for the 31 Japanese-Americans from Amache who volunteered for military service and then lost their lives in battle while their families remained locked up.