File:Camp Amache Relocation Center Lookout Tower by Night.jpg

English: Coming in at a solid third place in the list of Worst Things in Colorado History (behind the Sand Creek Massacre and the Ludlow Massacre), Camp Amache came into being in 1942, when Americans were so scared of the Japanese after the Pearl Harbor attack that every U.S. citizen of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast, as well as some Japanese non-citizens, needed to be “excluded” from society to prevent various crimes that were certain to affect national security. They lost any home they may have owned, businesses, most personal property, and their communities. They could keep only what they could carry with them.

The camp’s official name was the Granada War Relocation Center, and was the smallest of the ten camps around the U.S. It was also the only one built on private land, comprising ten thousand acres, most of which were set aside for farming. The camp was meant to be mostly self-sufficient, with a library, a fire department, police department, high school, and all the trappings of a small town, other than the eight guard towers and barbed-wire fencing, of course.

Coloradans, like the rest of the country, were very split in their opinions regarding whether the entire exercise was necessary, and if it was, how much comfort should be afforded the residents at the expense of the taxpayers. The residents of the town of Granada, while still being split, did come to know the camp residents as people and as citizens, allowing them into town to shop, even hiring some to work at local businesses. The high school football team from nearby Holly came into the camp to play against Amache on the camp’s home field, which ended up being the only game that year that Holly lost.4 Staff and inmates would play cards together, and War Relocation Authority reports indicated that relations between groups at Amache were “infinitely better” than at any other of the ten camps.

Surprisingly, Amache had its share of World War II veterans, including from the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the most decorated unit of its size in American history, and the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion, which received the Congressional Medal of Honor.6 The cemetery at the camp contains a war memorial for all Amache veterans, a memorial to the fallen, and remembrances of the 114 people who died while interned here.

Today, in a stunning display of maturity and educational self-awareness, the camp and its heritage are maintained by an all-volunteer force of students from Granada High School, helmed by Principal John Hopper, called the Amache Awareness Society. These students also travel to other schools, enlightening other students to the history of the World War II internment camps. Members of the Society also travel to Japan to live with host families and learn about Japanese culture.7 On the flip side of what America has grown to realize was our shame of Internment, these men and women represent the best of Colorado.