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Colorado internment camp may be restored |
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Written by Howard Pankratz
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Friday, 12 October 2007 |
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The restoration and maintenance of Camp
Amache, the internment camp in southeastern Colorado where 7,597
Japanese-Americans were forced to move during World War II, will be a
primary topic during a National Park Service hearing Monday in Denver.
The Park Service is also expected to hear comments about the Heart Mountain internment camp near Cody, Wyo.
Camp Amache was the smallest of the 10 relocation centers while
Heart Mountain saw almost 11,000 people there between August 1942 and
November 1945.
Last December, Congress established a $38 million program of
National Park Service grants to restore 10 camps across the United
States that housed Japanese-Americans forced from the West Coast in the
early 1940s .
Mary A. Bomar, the director of the National Park Service,
said a series of public hearings — to be held in Denver; Glendale,
Ariz.; Salt Lake City; Seattle; Las Vegas; Los Angeles and Sacramento —
will allow public input and give park service officials the opportunity
to answer questions about the criteria that will guide the
multi-million dollar program.
"The stories and struggles around national security and the
protection of civil liberties associated with these confinement sites
continues to resonate today," Bomar said. "This is a great opportunity
for people across the country to provide their thoughts about this new
program and what criteria should be used to evaluate future grant
proposals."
In 1941, nearly 113,000 people of Japanese ancestry were
living in California, Washington and Oregon. On Dec. 7, the Japanese
attacked Pearl Harbor and a little over two months later President
Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order empowering the Army to
remove certain people from excluded areas.
About 120,000 Japanese Americans were moved
to the notorious inland compounds, and received little in the way of
compensation from the government for the goods, businesses and property
they lost. In 1988, the government
agreed to pay $1.65 billion in reparations to 81,000 surviving camp inmates.
Camp Amache, also known as the Granada Relocation Center, is near Granada.
At is peak, the relocation camp contained 30 blocks of
residential barracks, each with its own mess hall, laundry and shower
rooms. Children attended school while adults worked on farms growing
crops such as alfalfa and corn.
Many Japanese-Americans who were relocated from the West Coast
to Colorado elected to remain in Colorado where Ralph Carr, governor of
Colorado during World War II, was alone among elected officials
condemning the incarcerations.
Today, grass grows over the barrack foundations. A small memorial and the camp cemetery are all that remain.
Several hundred
young men held at Amache volunteered for
the U.S. Army, and 31 were killed serving with the highly decorated
442nd regiment combat unit, composed entirely of Japanese-Americans.
In recent years, the townspeople of Granada along with various
civic groups in Colorado have tried to clean up the Amache camp site
and maintain the cemetery.
In 2006, then Interior Secretary Gale Norton designated the Amache Camp as a National Historic Landmark.
What: The National Park Service Intermountain Regional Office
will host discussion about restoration and maintenance of WWII Japanese
internment camps
When: Today, 1:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.
Where: Tri-State Denver Buddhist Temple, 1947 Lawrence St.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 12 October 2007 )
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