We are heartened to read that the designation of Camp Amache in Granada, Colorado as a historical site has passed the US Senate.
Kudos to Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet — and Sen. John Hickenlooper and Rep. Ken Buck —for taking up this cause and sticking with it, even as it ran into opposition.
Camp Amache is the site of an internment camp from WW II. Japanese-American citizens, guilty of no crime, were ordered to leave their homes for confinement in “camps” — prisoners, really — in different parts of the country.
Nearly all Japanese Americans were incarcerated. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt claimed this was for national security reasons in the wake of Pearl Harbor. Hogwash. As historians have long concluded, including Rafael Medoff in last week’s IJN, anti-Asian racism moved FDR. After all, German Americans and Italian Americans — also stemming from countries at war with the US — were not interned.
The imprisonment of Japanese Americans for no reason other than their race is a stain on American history. It must be acknowledged and taught. The designation of Camp Amache as a national historical site is an important part in that process. It recognizes the plight of Japanese Americans during WW II, and it provides a concrete site of remembrance and learning.
For global Jewry, especially for younger generations historically removed from the horrors of the Holocaust, pilgrimages to former concentration camps have become a rite of passage. Treading on the land where the abominations took place makes the past a reality in a way that learning in a classroom cannot.
We hope that Camp Amache will also soon house a museum that explains what happened there, and why. There is nothing like this kind of museum, where one stands on the very ground referenced in the displays, for teaching history.
For Coloradans, the internment of Japanese Americans has always been more well known that it was nationally, and not just because one of these internment camps was in Colorado, but because Ralph Carr, governor of Colorado from 1939 to 1943, opposed the internment of US citizens, and indeed sacrificed his political career for that courageous and humane stance.
Like many groups that have undergone collective trauma, Japanese Americans for many years did not discuss what happened to them during WW II, and how it affected their families and livelihoods.
That has changed in recent years. Camp Amache becoming a national historic site will hopefully bolster and deepen that much needed reckoning that Americans need to have, and that Japanese Americans deserve.
Copyright © 2022 by the Intermountain Jewish News
