Amache Camp Will Become National Historic Landmark
GRANADA, Colo.—This was a place no one talked about for a long time.
The people once warehoused on this 160-acre stretch of land choked with sagebrush and crumbling concrete foundations didn’t.
Neither did the people who lived in the town less than a mile away. When an eager, young high school teacher arrived in town 15 years ago and asked his students how to get to Camp Amache, they responded with blank faces.
“Amache?” they asked. “What’s that?”
Today they know.
Today — thanks largely to the same teacher who persisted in teaching the town its history and Japanese Americans determined to prevent a repetition of their past — Amache has become a place everyone knows.
It has a highway sign and brochures. It has a museum.
Now, it also has the official stamp of national recognition.
This year, the camp where thousands of JAs were held during World War II will become a national historic landmark, Department of the Interior officials said Feb. 10 in Denver.
In 1942, soon after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government ordered the exile of thousands of JAs to 10 internment camps across the country.
Amache, hastily built on land seized by the government from farmers in the town near the Kansas state line, was one of them — a veritable city, with a hospital, commissary, post office, rows of barracks and more than 7,000 inhabitants.
Sachi Nishida arrived as a 6-year-old on a train with the window blinds pulled down.
“There were soldiers with rifles. I was so glad I was with my mom and dad,” recalled Nishida, now of Culver City, Calif.
During the next several years, her life consisted of eating in a mess hall, experiencing ferocious thunderstorms and living without privacy in Barrack 10H7C.
When the camps closed, her family settled in Denver, where other kids didn’t seem to know anything about the camps. When Nishida referred to Amache, they thought she was talking about a summer camp.
“So many people do not know what happened,’’ Nishida said, in part because JAs did not speak of it.
Then one day in the 1960s, Nishida’s nephew told his class about his parents’ internment in a camp during the war.
“The teacher told my brother he was lying,’’ said Derek Okubo, vice president of the National Civic League in Denver. “My mom got very upset. I remember them saying, ‘I guess we have to talk about it.’”
In Granada, people didn’t talk much about Amache after the war, either.
The deserted camp became a place where youngsters went to play cards, dance and drink beer. Many called it the “Jap Camp.’’ The school didn’t teach what happened there, and few discussed it.
“I guess nobody was interested,” said Leslie Carter, 76, who had a job in 1945 demolishing the buildings when the camp closed.
It wasn’t just a lack of interest.
For some, feelings about the camp lingered — and feelings had always been mixed.
During the war, some were resentful of the government’s seizure of land to create the camp — resentment directed not only against Uncle Sam but also against the people forced to live there.
At the same time, residents appreciated the boost to the economy. Internees could come into town and spend money at stores.
Some were uncomfortable.
“We felt strange,’’ said former Gov. Roy Romer, who was a teenager in the nearby town of Holly. “Why were folks herded here? It was just strange.”
The incarceration, Romer figured then, was just a consequence of war. “It was something beyond our reach,” he said. “It dawned on us after the war how unfair it was.’’
Others didn’t draw that conclusion.
“It was a necessity,” said former mayor Lawrence McMillan, who was 9 when the camp opened.
Today, he still expresses the sentiments of that time — that putting JAs into camps not only ensured the country’s safety, it also protected them from those who wanted to harm them.
Over the years, attitudes have changed. Granada High School teacher John Hopper is a big part of the reason.
When he arrived in Granada in the early 1990s to teach, he set out to learn — and teach — about this site of such historic significance.
He quickly discovered Amache was a sensitive topic. He had to select his words carefully. Although some former internees referred to it as a “concentration’’ camp, that phrase angered residents, who insisted it was a “relocation.’’
Hopper learned not to debate residents who didn’t share his viewpoint. Instead, he focuses on young people.
“If you want to get rid of prejudices, start with the kids,’’ he said.
Every year, Hopper takes on about a dozen students for his class, in which they study the internment, maintain signs at the camp and make presentations throughout the country.
Because of their work, many residents regard the camp differently now. They’re also excited about the landmark status, which could accomplish the practical goals of boosting tourism and providing federal help in preserving the camp.
It also keeps people from forgetting, said Jim Hada, chairman of the Friends of Amache club.
“We haven’t forgotten this thing the government did to us. We want to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he said. “That’s the whole reason we’re doing this.”
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