Posted on 02/22/2024 2:57:51 AM PST by Red Badger
Granada Relocation Center, Amache, Colorado.
Image credit: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
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The US officially has a new national park. Amache National Historic Site near Granada, Colorado, has officially joined the likes of Yellowstone and Yosemite, the National Park Service announced last week.
Amache – also known as the Granada Relocation Center – has a dark past, having been one of 10 incarceration sites established by the War Relocation Authority during World War II to imprison Japanese Americans. Over 10,000 people, mostly American citizens, were detained at Amache from 1942 to 1945. At its peak, the site housed 7,310 incarcerees, making it the tenth largest city in Colorado at the time.
The site has now become the seventh national park established to preserve this unsavory chapter of American history, following the Town of Granada’s acquisition and donation of the land needed to establish the site into a park.
“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 said in a statement. “[The] 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.”
In March 2022, Amache became a National Historic Site, as President Biden assigned the area to the National Park System, making it the first such designation of the Biden-Harris administration. Prior to this, it was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1994, and made a National Historic Landmark in 2006.
After it closed in 1945, Amache’s original buildings were removed or demolished. However, it remains one of the most intact examples of a World War II incarceration site in the US. As well as building foundations and the historic road network, which are still visible today, the area is home to a historic cemetery, a monument, and several structures from the World War II era including a barrack, recreation hall, guard tower, and water tank.
It is thanks to the efforts of the Town of Granada, the Amache Preservation Society, former incarcerees and their descendants, and other individuals and organizations that the site is so well preserved and can help expand public awareness of Amache’s significance.
The announcement that the site is now formally established as a national park came days before the Day of Remembrance of Japanese Incarceration During World War II, observed on February 19 every year.
“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 said. “To heal and grow as a nation we need to reflect on past mistakes, make amends, and strive to form a more perfect union.”
One doesn’t heal by opening old wounds.
Frankly, when reports of the Bataan death march hit the papers it was a good thing that they were in camps.
Not exactly what I think of in the way of a park. Pretty desolate looking area.
Kids: “Daddy take us to the new Amache park …”
LOL
A “National Historic Site” is not a “National Park”.
the wrongs of our past in order to build a more just and equitable future,
I have no idea what that actually means...
Sorry...It should be demolished.
Are we white folks doing anything right? Have we ever?
Maybe they can repurpose it for illegal aliens.
White people are so terrible, Im surprised the rest of the world wants to live in our countries.
Fixed that.
Notice the article manages to not mention FDR.
Now to really throw some cognitive dissonance in here, what if there was massive spying and planned sabotage of the war effort by some Americans of recent Japanese descent? How to you deal with that situation without revealing you've broken a key Japanese code that allows you to know this?
Every FReeper interested in this issue should read:
If it isn’t one “dark chapter of injustice,” it’s another. I wish we would celebrate our achievements.
Righter than you knew. The principle reason for removing ethnic Japanese from the west coast was that riots were already starting to happen within days of Pearl Harbor.
The story you THINK you know is largely a fabrication by lawyers seeking compensation (and fat fees) from Congress in the 1980s.
The book is Magic: The Untold Story of U.S. Intelligence and the Evacuation of Japanese Residents from the West Coast During Ww II by David B. Lowman -- available from Amazon or Alibris.
Lowman was a former high level officer in the National Security Agency and a witness before congressional committees dealing with the evacuation he was uniquely qualified to tell this story. It touches closely on the American codebreakers' success in reading Japanese radio codes, hence the name. Until crucial documents were declassified he couldn't write this book, and consequently it was published posthumously.
Oh, good. You already posted the book title. I’d begun to think that I was the only person who even knew about it.
It means "KILL WHITEY!!!"
Hopefully not. No need to warehouse them, take them straight to the buses for the trip back to the border. I could see the feds rounding us up and renaming it Camp FReeper.
Hindsight is always 20/20
People tend to forget, while we look back at it as inevitable the American government would prevail in its prosecution of the war, in 1942 this was by no means certain. It was an all out effort, a 100% commitment by everyone. They rationed everything.
You couldn’t even buy a tube of toothpaste without turning the empty one back in to your friendly grocer, who counted it against your points. There is no way the i would have wasted any resources interning thousands of people unless they truly thought it was necessary.
There’s no other explanation that fits the facts. They weren’t going to take any chances, because they wanted to succeed in their objective. It illustrates the potential danger they feared, of having significant numbers of people within a political unit who may decide to cause trouble in one form or another. Enormous resources and planning were involved, men and material that could have been allocated to other direct methods of prosecuting the war.
I’m not excusing what they did, but I understand why they thought it was necessary at the time. There was no way to know for sure at the time.
Coming soon:
Another aggrieved group seeking reparations in 3..2..1..
Done did......................
More likely to be repurposed for MAGA supporters.
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