It is not a large space that stands out for its natural beauty, its geological characteristics or its ecosystems, however, the new national park of the United States – it was included in the network on February 15 – has great historical value. Unknown to a large majority of Americans, the Amache National Historic Site contains a truly ignominious past: it was one of the internment camps for thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II.
Located in Granada, a remote town in the state of Colorado with less than half a thousand inhabitants, 360 kilometers from Denver, Amache is also known as the Granada Relocation Center. Its mere existence is incomprehensible today and the new national park status will ensure that future generations know what happened there and prevent it from happening again.
To know the details we must go back to December 1941, when the imperial Japanese navy, in a military offensive, attacked the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii by surprise. The action, which deeply shocked Americans, was the trigger for the country’s entry into the war.
Among the many consequences of this attack, one of the cruelest was Executive Order 9066 signed by President Franklin Roosevelt in February 1942. The provision, which considered American citizens of Japanese descent a threat to national security, established the creation of ten closed detention sites for all of them.
Despite the fact that at no time had any incident or sabotage been recorded, 122,000 people – including children -, thousands of them born in the United States, were forced to give up everything they had and abandon their homes on the West Coast. They lost everything: homes, businesses, property and personal freedoms. Upon arriving at the internment camps they found deplorable conditions. Surrounded by barbed wire and watched by armed guards, they occupied barracks that did not meet the slightest living conditions.
Amache was one of these ten concentration camps in which they were locked up. From August 1942 to October 1945, once the war was over, more than ten thousand citizens passed through its facilities, but at its peak, in 1943, it housed 7,310 prisoners, making the center the tenth largest largest city in the state of Colorado at the time. Over time, some of the inmates managed to get out of there, enlisting to fight on the front.
The initial living conditions were very harsh. The barracks lacked running water, heating and even furniture, and the extreme climate of Colorado was unbearable due to the lack of thermal insulation, with temperatures that in winter reached -5º and in summer exceeded 40º and strong winds that carried dust and snow.
After it closed in 1945, most of the original buildings were demolished, but visitors can still look back today and imagine what the camp was like.
Upon entering the premises, you will find a monument, a recreation room and a historic cemetery where more than one hundred inmates were buried. In addition, a small part of the facilities, such as two towers, one for water and the other for surveillance, and one of the barracks have been rebuilt, allowing you to put yourself in the shoes of those who passed through them in the early 1920s. forties. Also the foundations of historic buildings and road alignments remain almost intact, preserved for decades by the camp’s survivors and their descendants.
Today, access is free. It is essential to explore it without haste. Those who intend to do so should keep in mind that it is located in a somewhat inhospitable area with hardly any shadows, which makes it advisable to wear a hat and bring water with you, since it does not have bar service (the closest is in the center of Granada ).
With the inclusion of Amache, there are now seven internment camps recognized as national parks in the United States. This is the case of Minidoka, in Idaho, or Manzanar and Tule Lake in California, among others. According to National Park Service Director Chuck Sams, “Amache’s addition is a reminder that a complete account of the country’s history must include our dark chapters of injustice.”
