National Parks

[RTH10260]

Colorado is now home to America’s newest national park
Amache National Historic Site, where thousands of Japanese-Americans were detained during World War II, is now part of the National Park system

By Lauren Penington | lpenington@denverpost.com
PUBLISHED: February 16, 2024 at 7:35 a.m. | UPDATED: February 19, 2024 at 11:52 a.m.

Amache National Historic Site in southeastern Colorado is officially America’s newest national park, the National Park Service announced Thursday.

Amache, located one mile outside of Granada, was one of 10 incarceration sites used to detain thousands of Japanese-Americans during World War II. The town of Granada acquired and donated the land needed to establish the site as a national park.
RELATED: For Japanese Americans imprisoned at Amache internment camp, lifetimes of silence and undeserved shame

“Amache’s addition to the National Park System is a reminder that a complete account of the nation’s history must include our dark chapters of injustice,” National Park Service Director Chuck Sams stated in a Thursday news release. “To heal and grow as a nation we need to reflect on past mistakes, make amends, and strive to form a more perfect union.”

Nearly two years ago in March 2022, President Joe Biden signed into law a bill backed by Colorado lawmakers to designate the camp a National Historic Site.

The goal then was to make Amache, also known as the Granada Relocation Center, eligible for increased funding to protect and preserve the historical site.

Before becoming a National Historic Site, Amache was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on May 18, 1994, and designated a National Historic Landmark on February 10, 2006.

“As a nation, we must face the wrongs of our past in order to build a more just and equitable future,” Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland stated in Thursday’s news release. “Today’s establishment of the Amache National Historic Site will help preserve and honor this important and painful chapter in our nation’s story for future generations.”



https://www.denverpost.com/2024/02/16/a ... -colorado/

[noblepa]

And the Orange One, or his sycophants, will begin claiming that the incarceration of Japanese American US citizens during WWII did not happen, or that they went to the camps willingly and they enjoyed the free room and board provided by the kindly US government.

[Kendra]

And the Orange One, or his sycophants, will begin claiming that the incarceration of Japanese American US citizens during WWII did not happen, or that they went to the camps willingly and they enjoyed the free room and board provided by the kindly US government.

But...we still have George Takei to call BS on those versions. Don't know what camp he and family were in, but he knows of what he speaks and IMHO he's got a pretty damn big audience out there.

[Frater I*I]

But...we still have George Takei to call BS on those versions. Don't know what camp he and family were in, but he knows of what he speaks and IMHO he's got a pretty damn big audience out there.

I met him once and got to speak a few minutes with him at a convention years back, Dear Zeus I am proud of that fact now....

[noblepa]

And the Orange One, or his sycophants, will begin claiming that the incarceration of Japanese American US citizens during WWII did not happen, or that they went to the camps willingly and they enjoyed the free room and board provided by the kindly US government.

But...we still have George Takei to call BS on those versions. Don't know what camp he and family were in, but he knows of what he speaks and IMHO he's got a pretty damn big audience out there.

True. There are still a few old men and women who were sent to the camps as children and can attest to the facts. I'm sure that there are written records kept by whatever government agency ran the camps.

But, as we all know, facts have never stopped Trump or his followers from denying history or facts. If he takes it into his head to deny it, the MAGA crowd will accept it as gospel and nothing will deter him from defaming the memory of those innocents who suffered unneccessarily.

[keith]

I strongly approve that the detention centers are not being allowed to be completely swept under the rug. National Park status for Amache is wonderful.

This is a story not about a national park, but another internment camp that actually has a connection to US legal history and has been neglected almost to the point of suppression of its existence. It is located in the Coronado National Forest, but is not a park.

Dark side of U.S. history that built Catalina Highway

Gordon Hirabayashi was detained in a camp on Mount Lemmon and forced to work on the Catalina Highway that was built in the 1930's as part of the WPA. The Catalina Highway is the road that goes up Mount Lemmon north of Tucson. Mt. Lemmon is home to the southernmost ski area in the USA (not very challenging, but it exists), great views, hiking, etc, etc, etc. The U of A's Steward Observatory has a telescope up there too.

In fear of people from Japanese descent causing harm to the country, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the removal or any or all people “as deemed necessary or desirable,” even American citizens, and forced them to move eastward and into remote internment camps.

It’s known as the largest forced removal and incarceration in the U.S. history. More than 100,000 Japanese Americans were relocated to isolated internment camps.

Hirabayashi refused to register at a processing center and then turned himself into the FBI. He was jailed, but wouldn’t post the $500 bail. He remained in jail for six months awaiting his trial. Hirabayashi was found guilty of violating the court orders and was sentenced to serve three months at the internment camp on Mt. Lemmon [for violating curfew].

The government refused to pay for his fare to get to Arizona, so he hitchhiked to the camp. When he arrived, the guards couldn’t find his papers and told him to go into town and see a movie while they looked. He took their advice, then headed back to camp to serve the three months. “A very honorable thing to do,” said Irons.

Hirabayashi also served a year in prison for refusing to induction. He and two others took their conviction to the Supreme Court in 1942 and lost.

(Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81 (1943))

(Wikipedia)
Soon after retiring, Hirabayashi received a call that would prove consequential. Peter Irons, a political science professor from the University of California, San Diego, had uncovered documents that clearly showed evidence of government misconduct in 1942—evidence that the government knew there was no military reason for the exclusion order but withheld that information from the United States Supreme Court. With this new information, Hirabayashi's case was reheard by the federal courts, and in 1987 the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit granted a writ of coram nobis which overturned his criminal conviction.
(Hirabayashi v. United States, 828 F.2d 591 (9th Cir. 1987)).

My ex-house partner grew up in the Camp on Mt. Lemmon where Gordon Hirabayashi spent his three-month detention. Her father ran and lived at the Prison Honor Camp that was set up there after the war. Today it is not much more than a poorly kept picnic area at the end of a rather scrappy dirt road with a few building ruins scattered around (as at my last visit 10 years ago). The site is named after Hirabayashi.

[keith]

A little postscript to my novel above - from a comment left on the first article I linked:

This article appropriately and rightly calls out a shameful part of US history that it is so very important to remember! I think the article could leave some readers who have never read about the history of the highway with the impression that the prison camp was built after WWII as an internment camp and housed exclusively Japanese Americans?

The use of prisoners to build the highway started before WWII in 1933 when prisoners were housed at a temporary site at the base of the mountain – in 1939 the prison camp was moved up to the present site. The camp was a minimum security facility without fences/guard towers (articles mention painted white rocks as the boundary). As the article above states after WWII the demographics of who was imprisoned changed – ’45 Japanese American draft resisters’ were at the prison in addition to ‘Jehovahs Witnesses (JWs), Hopi, various conscientious objectors such as members of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Pentecostals, Mennonites, Molican Brethren, and Independents, adding to the existing population of inmates serving non-war related sentences.’ (from an NPS document, AZ Daily Star article and the Densho Encyclopedia). The prison remained open after WWII and the 1947 pardon of draft resistors until the completion of the highway in 1951 when it was converted into a juvenile prison.

It was the Juvenile 'prison' that my friends father ran.

[Kendra]

But...we still have George Takei to call BS on those versions. Don't know what camp he and family were in, but he knows of what he speaks and IMHO he's got a pretty damn big audience out there.

I met him once and got to speak a few minutes with him at a convention years back, Dear Zeus I am proud of that fact now....

Lucky you.

[Flatpoint High]

George Takei and his family were interned at Santa Anita Park (Race Track)

[RTH10260]

Wasn't the Race Track just an intermediate collection point prior to the transport to the camps?

[northland10]

According to Wikipedia, his family was at Rohwer, AR, and then transferred to Tule Lake in northern California because they refused to sign a loyalty oat it something on the questionnaire.