Former Internment Camp in Colorado Becomes National Historic Site

A Japanese-American interment camp from the Second World War in Colorado has been folded into the care of the National Park Service. As a new National Historic Site, the Amache Internment Camp is now part of the Service’s commitment to tell the entire story of American history. The camp has been preserved for years by local students,the Amache Preservation Society (APS), a group of volunteer students from the local school district in southeast Colorado, led for 30 years by John Hopper.

Hopper, a social studies teacher in 1993, was teaching some students who turned a one-time class project speaking with a survivor of the camp into a preservation society. The focus was on giving class presentations, operating a museum, and maintaining the site—which holds a large collection of government-issue barracks where thousands of Japanese Americans were detained. According to the National Park Service, the center was more commonly known as “Camp Amache.”

It was one of 10 centers constructed in the US during World War II for the purpose of interning Japanese Americans and people of Japanese descent. More than 10,000 people passed through Camp Amache and it housed over 7,300 internees at its peak. Two-thirds of those housed were U.S. citizens. Now, the Granada Relocation Center site consists of a cemetery, a monument, building foundations, and landscaping. Hopper is now Dean of Students but students from the same school still run tours of the site, mow the lawns, and even pursue occasional excavations under the supervision of the University of Denver.

The APS works on presentations to other schools; in recent years, also began organizing trips to Japan to stay with host families and do their presentations in Japanese high schools. In 2006, Amache was designated a historic landmark and was recently designated a National Historic Site. The new designation transfers the responsibility and ownership of the town of Granada to the National Park Service. National Park Service Director Chuck Sams said “The National Park Service will continue working closely with key stakeholders dedicated to the preservation of Amache, including the APS, to preserve and interpret this significant historic site to the public.”