Natasha Varner
Fellow, Us@250
A Chapter of: Miles to Go: Stories of Us at 250
The Afterlife of Amache
During World War II, the federal government imprisoned thousands of Japanese Americans in a camp on the Colorado plains鈥攖he fight to tell their story continues to this day.
Editor鈥檚 note: This essay originally appeared in on July 2, 2026. It has been lightly edited to adhere to house style.
Photo courtesy of Natasha Varner.
On a Saturday morning this past May, some 150 people gathered in a quiet corner of Colorado, just minutes shy of the Kansas border. Some had traveled for days to be there; others had arrived by way of a four-hour bus ride from Denver. As the temperature pitched toward the 90s, they clustered in what shade they could find and talked in hushed voices. Though it鈥檚 hard to see it through the sagebrush that now blankets the land, Colorado鈥檚 tenth-largest city once stood here. That city was also a prison, and the lives of more than 7,000 Japanese Americans became tied to this place during World War II. Survivors returned years later with one simple request: Can we remember what happened here? For decades, the answer to that question was no.聽
Photo courtesy of Vicki Shigekuni Wong.
When 12-year-old Thomas Shigekuni first laid eyes on the denuded grassland that would become his home, all he could think was: 鈥淲hat is this? Is this it? This is in the middle of nowhere.鈥 Shigekuni had spent the preceding months witnessing the sudden loss of all that was familiar to him. His family, which included Thomas鈥檚 parents and two older brothers, lived in South Los Angeles and ran a chain of successful plant nurseries that kept them financially secure throughout the Great Depression. He had a simple life, taking judo and Japanese language classes after school. But the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, set off a chain of events that would change all of that. The FBI quickly mobilized to arrest citizens and resident immigrants they had been surveilling for 鈥渟uspicious鈥 activities like practicing the Shinto religion and membership in Japanese flower arranging societies.聽
Paranoia and propaganda soon enveloped the nation. Suddenly anyone of Japanese descent was perceived as a potential enemy. Seventy years later, Shigekuni still remembered how a classmate accosted him at school, saying: 鈥淵ou guys attacked Pearl Harbor!鈥 Caving to pressure from military leaders who claimed that Japanese Americans were 鈥渁n enemy race鈥 and that mass incarceration was necessary, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 into law on February 19, 1942. The order paved the way for more than 120,000 Japanese Americans from coastal Washington through Southern Arizona鈥攖wo-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens鈥攖o be stripped of their constitutional rights and forcibly removed from the area. Military police posted civil exclusion orders neighborhood-by-neighborhood over the next few months, giving Japanese Americans one week to make arrangements for their possessions and report for removal. They were issued a date of departure but not one indicating when, or even if, they would be permitted to return home.聽
The Shigekunis sold their nurseries at a loss and packed up their belongings. They were first imprisoned at Santa Anita Park, a racetrack northeast of LA, where some detainees slept in recently vacated horse stalls and the stench of manure permeated the makeshift prison. Meanwhile, the federal War Relocation Authority set about hastily building 10 residential prison facilities鈥攁lternately called 鈥渞elocation centers鈥 and 鈥渃oncentration camps鈥 in official communications of the era鈥攊n remote parts of the country. Located on the far western edge of the Great Plains, Colorado鈥檚 Granada War Relocation Center, better known as Amache, was the smallest.聽
Hailing largely from central and southern California, many in the camp鈥檚 population had never seen snow nor dealt with the punishingly dry heat characteristic of High Plains summers. The barracks that awaited them lacked insulation and did little to keep the outside from coming in. Atop land that had been scrubbed of all vegetation to make way for the camp and in a region still freshly haunted by the Dust Bowl, the slightest gust of wind could conjure a sandstorm. 鈥淚f we鈥檙e caught outside in it we鈥檙e nearly blinded,鈥 Henry Fuijita wrote in a letter to friends back home soon after arriving in October 1942.聽
Photo courtesy of the George Ochikubo Collection, Densho.
Indignities became the new normal. Entire families had to live in single-room residences; open shower and toilet facilities meant people had to share even their most private moments with others. In the early days, guards staffed the towers around the clock with their guns trained inward.
The typically verbose Shigekuni had just one word for the food: 鈥淏ad.鈥 A reviled dish called 鈥渨eenie royale鈥 made regular appearances on mess hall menus. Poor refrigeration and untrained chefs led to mass outbreaks of food-borne illnesses. Some, including Kyushiro Homma, refused to eat. Before the war, Homma had been a popular Hollywood dental surgeon whose oeuvre included correcting Shirley Temple鈥檚 overbite. While his smiles were winning the hearts of America, Homma lost weight so rapidly that he suffered a stroke and cardiac arrest. He died at 44, leaving behind his wife and three young children.聽
Still, Japanese Americans did what they could to make Amache home. Shigekuni remembers incarcerees collecting money to buy fast-growing Siberian elm saplings from a nearby nursery, then planting them for shade and as wind breaks alongside the barracks. Amache鈥檚 population included talented agrarians from California鈥檚 Central Valley who transformed tired beet and melon fields into a high-yield agricultural enterprise. Within little more than a year, they harvested some four million pounds of vegetables, generating enough surplus that they were able to send produce to other WRA camps as well as to the U.S. Army. Incarcerees built ornamental gardens and cultivated a variety of rose so tough that it still blooms untended more than 80 years later. They ordered hair dye, sake, eye drops for hay fever, and condoms from the Japanese-owned T.K. Pharmacy in Denver. (One of Shigekuni鈥檚 formative camp memories is of seeing a friend working to clear a sewer system that had become clogged with the prophylactics.) Amacheans started a screen-printing shop, a co-op, and an art school. Many carried on because they had no other choice, but 鈥渢here was a fine line between hope and despair on a daily basis,鈥 Amache survivor Henry Okubo would later tell his son.聽
Shigekuni and his family were assigned to a single room in a barrack on the far southern edge of camp, adjacent to a guard tower and the camp鈥檚 makeshift Buddhist church. He recalled regularly being kept up at night by funerary chants coming from the church. Shigekuni was a pensive kid and, in a photo taken with his family just after their arrival, stylish in a leather bomber jacket and slicked-back black hair. Despite his young age, he was keenly aware of the injustice his community had been subjected to and dedicated himself to committing small acts of resistance. In school essays, he railed against the actions of the U.S. government and the Japanese American Citizens League, a civil rights organization he felt was 鈥減andering to the whites鈥 due to their controversial wartime tactics to prove Japanese American loyalty. During the daily recital of the pledge of allegiance at school, he muttered his own ending under his breath: 鈥…with liberty and justice for all except us Japanese Americans.鈥
Outside the camp, the narrative about the incarceration was being revised even while it happened. A spread in an October 1942 edition of Newsday used a racial slur to proclaim that the Japanese had 鈥渋nvade[d] Colorado.鈥 The newspaper juxtaposed the incendiary accusation against photos of smiling Japanese Americans and claims that 鈥渇ew showed any disposition to grumble.鈥 A sample mess hall menu included with the article suggested that Amacheans were feasting on roast beef with gravy, fresh fruit, and bacon with their eggs every morning.聽
Media coverage like this did not land well with locals who were curbing their own diets due to wartime rations. The camp was particularly unpopular in the Arkansas River Valley, where many already resented the U.S. government for abandoning them during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression. The federal government added to their grievances by using the power of eminent domain to condemn and then claim much of the land upon which Amache was built. Landowners received pennies on the dollar for their property, and the tenant-farming families who rented the land, many of whom were themselves poor immigrants from Eastern Europe and Mexico, lost homes and livelihoods without compensation. With its new high school and rumors of rich foods, life inside the concentration camp looked like luxury to some.聽
Photo courtesy of the George Ochikubo Collection, Densho.
Still, the town of Granada, less than a mile from the camp, had little choice but to settle into what Shigekuni called 鈥渁 gigantic marriage of unwilling participants鈥 with the prison that shared its name. (The informal 鈥淎mache,鈥 the most common moniker used by the survivor community, is taken from a Cheyenne woman, Amaeohtse鈥檈 Ochinee Prowers, who was a direct descendent of the Sand Creek Massacre and a prominent figure in the Arkansas River Valley during the late nineteenth century.) As the war plodded on, the boundaries between Granada and Amache grew thinner. Realizing their wards posed no threat, administrators started granting Japanese Americans farmwork releases and day passes to travel to Granada and nearby Lamar for goods not available inside the camp. Granada did not have a movie theater so residents would attend film screenings鈥攊ncluding one particularly on-the-nose feature, Love Thy Neighbor鈥攊n Amache鈥檚 recreation hall.聽
This modicum of freedom helped buoy morale for some incarcerees, and local businesses benefited from the sudden influx of new customers. But Shigekuni recalled the relationship as being 鈥渟trained, to say the least.鈥 Japanese Americans had to contend with higher prices at stores, local park bans, and other forms of discrimination. At one point, Shigekuni was stranded 17 miles away from the camp when a bus driver in Lamar refused to let him board. 鈥淭hose things I remember, and they are seared in my memory,鈥 he said in a 2001 interview with Westword.
When the war ended in 1945, Japanese Americans yet again faced the loss of home and community. They were given $25 and a bus ticket to start their lives anew. Many had nothing to return to and dispersed to places like Chicago and Salt Lake City. Around 2,000 Amacheans stayed in Colorado, at least temporarily. Before they left the camp, a group of incarcerees built the site鈥檚 first memorial: a small brick shrine next to the cemetery. Inside, they placed a granite monument inscribed with kanji script and a wooden honor roll bearing the names of Amache servicemen who had been killed while fighting for the country that had imprisoned them.聽
Amache was left to dust and ruin. Barracks were lifted off their foundations and sold by the War Assets Administration for use across the region. The city of Granada purchased the land from the federal government; wells dug to supply water for the camp became, and remain, the town鈥檚 primary water source. Sand prairie scrub slowly reclaimed the landscape. Compelled by trauma, shame, and government-led assimilation efforts, a cloak of silence fell upon many Amache survivors too.聽
After leaving Colorado, Shigekuni eventually found his way back to southern California, where he attended Pepperdine University, started a family, and opened a nursery like the one his parents had before the war. Seeing a need for greater legal support in the industry, he went to law school and opened a practice in Torrance, California. He moved on with his life, but his time at Amache stayed with him鈥攁nd he wanted others to remember it, too.聽
In photos and old video recordings, Shigekuni is a slight and serious man, his mouth a short, straight line inclined to turn downward into a frown, especially when recalling memories of his youth. 鈥淚t鈥檚 just like it鈥檚 in concrete….He can鈥檛 get over it,鈥 said his wife, Ruth, who was incarcerated as a child in Idaho鈥檚 Minidoka camp. He returned to Granada in 1970 to begin plotting out a location for a historical marker to memorialize the camp. Shigekuni later partnered with his former Amache schoolmate Minoru Tonai and other California-based survivors to form the Amache Historical Society, with the twin goals of 鈥減erpetuating the memory鈥 of the camp and preventing similar injustices. 鈥淗e was the very first person I know to talk of resurrecting Amache,鈥 Tonai said in a video tribute to Shigekuni, and 鈥渉is ulterior motive [was] to make sure that no one else suffered the way we did.鈥
Momentum was building in Colorado, too. In 1968, Japanese Americans started a Denver chapter of the civic group Optimist International to organize grassroots preservation at Amache. Five years later, Russel Endo, the child of Arkansas鈥 Jerome concentration camp survivors, moved to the state for a faculty position in the University of Colorado Boulder鈥檚 newly minted Ethnic Studies Program. The first time he visited Amache, 鈥淚 felt this real rush of emotions,鈥 he says. 鈥淧eople talk about this, about the power of place. Standing there, you sort of feel this energy radiating into your body from the surroundings.鈥
Endo was so moved by the experience that he took his students back, then set about organizing the first community pilgrimage to the site in 1976. He secured a $1,000 grant from Colorado鈥檚 Centennial-Bicentennial Commission and began planning what would become the state鈥檚 only official Asian American event during that anniversary year. Endo had the support of Denver-based civil rights advocate Minoru Yasui as well as Marge Taniwaki, a community organizer and Manzanar concentration camp survivor. Like Endo, Taniwaki was deeply moved by the experience of visiting Amache but also troubled by what she saw. The monument that incarcerees had erected before they left was pocked with bullet marks, and the honor roll had been stripped from the wall and burned. Endo and Taniwaki helped former incarcerees locate the foundations of the barracks they had once called home. Both recalled survivors鈥 shock at how big the elm saplings they鈥檇 planted had grown.
While Japanese Americans were beginning to grapple with their past, no such reckoning was underway in Granada. On the contrary, residents seemed determined to bury鈥攐r at least rewrite鈥攖he story of the place that local maps still referred to as the 鈥淛– Camp.鈥 A commemorative book published in honor of the town鈥檚 centennial anniversary in 1973 cast such a sunny light on Amache that, Shigekuni wrote, 鈥渙ne would wonder why anybody would ever want to leave that place.鈥澛
Still harboring resentment over the government land seizure and rumors that incarcerees were coddled in the camp, Granada leadership grew increasingly vocal in their opposition to Amache preservation efforts throughout the 1980s. A particular flashpoint centered around a new monument that survivors wanted to erect at the Amache cemetery. The proposed marker referred to the site as a concentration camp. For Shigekuni and some of his compatriots, this wording was not only historically accurate but also a critical move away from widely used euphemisms like 鈥渞elocation,鈥 鈥渆vacuation,鈥 and 鈥渋nternment,鈥 which refers to the detention of foreign nationals and obscures the reality that the United States had violated its own constitution when it detained citizens en masse.
Photo courtesy of Derek Okubo.
Henry Okubo, an Amache survivor and founding member of the Denver Central Optimist Club, recalled that the first meeting with the Granada town council about the monument 鈥渆nded in a shouting match.鈥 Granada鈥檚 mayor at the time, Lawrence McMillian, was nine years old when he and his tenant-farming family were evicted from their homes to make way for Amache. Bitterness over that loss reverberates throughout a 1983 letter that McMillian addressed to Shigekuni. 鈥淟et us not be deluded into believing that Japanese Americans were the only Americans to endure suffering, pain, and loss as a result of this war,鈥 McMillian wrote. 鈥淐ertainly, the Committee can describe the circumstances of the evacuation and relocation of the Japanese Americans in words not designed to keep their country in perpetual humiliation.鈥 The letter, which the entire Granada town council endorsed, closed by asking: 鈥淚s not forgiveness one of the highest principles of Americanism?鈥澛
The conflict that played out over the proposed monument did not exist in a vacuum. Just a decade earlier, survivors of the Manzanar concentration camp had waged a similar battle over terminology with the state of California. Lillian Baker, a Gardena, California, widow, became a prominent detractor in that conflict and later in the nationwide movement for Japanese American redress by aggressively denying the realities of WWII incarceration. She took particular issue with the use of the term 鈥渃oncentration camp,鈥 which she called 鈥渋nsidiously politically motivated.鈥 In 1976, she founded the group Americans for Historical Accuracy and took her misinformation campaign to the national stage. She testified during congressional hearings on Japanese American reparations in the early 1980s, and at one point physically assaulted Amache survivor and WWII veteran James Kawaminami by attempting to wrench the written testimony of his incarceration experience out of his hands.聽
Baker had more than just an abstract influence on Granada-Amache relations. Thelma Jean Schibbelhut served as Granada鈥檚 town clerk for most of the 1980s, and documents found in Shigekuni鈥檚 and Henry Okubo鈥檚 personal collections identify her as 鈥the apparent local leader in the fight to prevent any use of the Amache site for over 48 years鈥 and as a 鈥済ood friend鈥 and 鈥渧ociferous supporter鈥 of Baker.聽
The Denver Central Optimists were eventually able to negotiate a compromise with the town council and place a granite tribute to Amache鈥檚 fallen WWII vets in the camp cemetery in 1983. Shigekuni celebrated the victory but also wanted a monument that told a more complete story of the incarceration and knew the town wasn鈥檛 ready for that. He instead proposed a 鈥渕onument in exile鈥 to be placed in Denver鈥檚 Sakura Square for 鈥渁s long as the Granada people insist on suppressing our story.鈥 Six years later, the needle hadn鈥檛 moved. When the Denver Central Optimists attempted to secure a place for Amache on the National Register of Historic Sites, Schibbelhut informed the organization that 鈥渢he Council rejected the idea of nominating the Amache Site for inclusion in the U.S. National Register of Historic Sites, and will strongly oppose any effort by anyone to do so.鈥澛
Today, Granada is a dwindling town split in two by Highway 50. A towering concrete grain elevator looms over a modest cluster of single-story homes and streets that sit wide and empty in the swell of the noonday sun. The local high school has an average graduating class of 15, and a shortage of teachers in recent years has led the district to hire seasonal educators from the Philippines, housing them in a building once used for Amache鈥檚 administrative staff. A mostly windowless building serves as the combined police station, city hall, and community center. The town has two retail spaces: a liquor store and the Stop 2 Shop convenience store, where the Fourth of July is not a day but a season, stretching in all its red, white, and blue-tassled glory from sometime in mid-May until after the kids go back to school in September.聽
John Hopper has lived in Granada for most of his adult life. He鈥檚 an avuncular man with a slightly guarded demeanor that might read as standoffish if not for the mischievous smirk that, fleetingly but often, reveals his dimples. Hopper grew up about 60 miles west in Las Animas but chanced into a job as the Granada High School history teacher the day before classes started in 1990. He鈥檇 known about Amache because his mother worked with a former incarceree, Emory Namura, at the Las Animas hospital, but he had never been there. When he moved to town, his students couldn鈥檛 tell him where the camp was. He soon discovered why: The site had been tucked away behind locked gates and the town dump, marked only by a rusty sign posted to a tree.聽
Hopper recounts all this with the rote meter of a man who has had to tell the same story many times over. A year into the job at Granada High School, he worried that he was boring his students by teaching textbook history and saw an opportunity in the remarkable piece of history in the town鈥檚 backyard. He had students build a scale model of Amache and interview Namura, who connected them to other Amache survivors. In 1993, Hopper and his students formally organized the Amache Preservation Society (APS), recording oral histories, giving public talks about Amache, and tending to the site. Camp artifacts鈥攕crapbooks, stuffed animals, a wedding dress鈥攕tarted pouring in from survivors who could finally trust that someone in Granada was ready to hold their history. So many items arrived that the group eventually started a small museum in Granada that remains open to this day.聽
Attitudes about Japanese American incarceration had begun to shift on the national level following the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which granted $20,000 and a presidential apology to every citizen and legal resident incarcerated in the camps. The legislation, signed by President Ronald Reagan, admitted that the detention of Japanese Americans was not an act of military necessity but instead a result of 鈥渞acial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a lack of political leadership.鈥 And in Granada, two major obstacles were out of the picture: McMillian had retired as mayor and gone back to working full time as the town barber, and Schibbelhut had lost standing when, in 1992, she was convicted of embezzling more than $83,000 from the municipality. Demographic shift helped too. Over the years, the population became less white and less anchored in bitterness over the government鈥檚 land seizure.聽
Still, Hopper鈥檚 work drew the ire of the town鈥檚 old guard. 鈥淢y name was mud in this community,鈥 he told me. People accosted him on the streets and sent him hate mail, demanding that he stop teaching Amache history. Hopper was undeterred. After he realized that arguing wasn鈥檛 making a difference, he learned to hear people out and then respond, 鈥淪o you鈥檝e said your piece. Bye. Have a nice day. I鈥檒l have a beer with you later.鈥澛
For Amache survivors, Hopper and his students were the local advocates they had been waiting for. With the town鈥檚 support, they successfully won the bid for a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994. And in June 1998, the Amache Historical Society and the Denver Central Optimists organized a reunion in Colorado Springs and the largest pilgrimage yet to the site. More than 400 survivors and their families participated, and this time Granada welcomed them. Thomas Grasmick was mayor at the time, and his eldest son had been an early APS student. In a letter to Shigekuni, Mayor Grasmick extended 鈥渙ur welcome and offer any assistance to make your visit to Amache and the Town of Granada memorable.鈥
Thomas Shigekuni passed away seven years ago at the age of 90, but his daughter, Vicki Shigekuni Wong, visited Amache for the first time during the May 2023 annual pilgrimage. She gave the elegant affect of old Hollywood in an oversize black woven visor and darkly tinted shades. For so long, her father鈥檚 dedication to preserving the site seemed to her like an unhealthy fixation. 鈥淗e was crazy about Amache,鈥 Shigekuni Wong told me. 鈥淭hat was his number one topic.鈥 His obsession made sense to her after she experienced the place herself. At the threshold of a model barrack that now sits on the site, she felt a rush of emotion. 鈥淚 mean, I almost didn鈥檛 want to go in. But when I went in, I was shocked….I was outraged.鈥澛
Later that day, Shigekuni Wong listened closely as Mitch Homma, the grandson of the famous dentist who had died at Amache, addressed a small crowd of pilgrimage attendees. He stood on the foundation of the barrack where his father鈥檚 family lived during the war. The wind whipped flurries of dust up from the ground, and wildfire smoke that had drifted unfathomably far south from Canada stretched across the sky like a curtain drawn too tightly from one horizon to the other. As he spoke, Homma grasped a family portrait taken at that exact spot in 1944. His eyes were wet from dust or tears, perhaps both, and his voice frequently pitched higher with emotion. He recalled his first visit to Amache in 2008. He had convinced his father to come back for the first time too. 鈥淲hen we got off the bus…I saw the look on dad鈥檚 face. And I thought I was the worst son in the whole world. You could just see all the memories. Whenever dad talked about Amache…he would always say, 鈥楢mache took my father away.鈥欌澛
Though his first trip to Amache was a challenging one for Homma, it inspired him to get involved in helping to preserve the site. He joined the Amache Alliance, a California-based organization for descendants of the camp, and now serves as the president of its board of directors. By that time, years of grassroots advocacy and relationship-building had won the site National Historic Landmark status in 2006; six years later, Granada signed a 99-year preservation easement to protect the property. In 2019, Tracy Coppola of the National Parks Conservation Alliance, a national parks advocacy group, suggested to Homma that the time was right to go for National Historic Site status, the highest level of federal protection.聽
From there, Homma says, things 鈥渒ind of just snowballed.鈥 With a groundswell of support from Amache survivors and descendants, Granada locals and APS graduates, and Coppola, Colorado Senators John Bennet and Michael Hickenlooper co-sponsored the Amache National Historic Site Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law on March 18, 2022. Even though Shigekuni wasn鈥檛 alive to witness this moment, his daughter, Vicki, thanked the president for him: 鈥淗e pledged to make certain that this dark period in history would not be forgotten. He always warned that 鈥榠t could happen again.鈥欌
Where the prison city of Amache once stood, a partial blueprint remains. Native bunchgrasses thrive in water that pools in the cracked concrete foundations of barracks. The original roadways still form a neat grid of loose white dirt that plumes behind cars as they nose their way across the site鈥檚 single square mile. The Siberian elms that incarcerees planted are nearing the end of their lives now and fallen limbs prostrate themselves dramatically atop the ruins.
Photo courtesy of Natasha Varner.
**
When I first spoke to Eric Leonard in September 2023, he was just four months into his position as the superintendent of the High Plains Group of national park units, which includes Bent鈥檚 Old Fort, the Sand Creek Massacre, and, now, the Amache national historic site. Although he was still mired in the logistics of starting up the new park, Leonard was optimistic about its potential impact. To him, national parks, especially the ones that preserve the darker chapters of our collective history, are 鈥淎merica鈥檚 greatest classroom.鈥 He went on: 鈥淲hen we start to represent underrepresented groups in the National Park System, often, but not always, we鈥檙e preserving sites of violence or controversy, or both. And these places are not good or bad. They鈥檙e American places. It鈥檚 not our job to give people answers. It鈥檚 our job to give them enough information that they can start to think about it on their own, because that鈥檚 what a free society聽is.鈥
By the following summer, the National Park Service (NPS) had a growing presence at Amache. Uniformed rangers greeted visitors who had come out to see a University of Denver Amache Community Archaeology Project dig. Bruce Smith, a member of the Kansas chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution, had driven seven and a half hours to see the new national historic site. He was most taken with the gardens the incarcerees built and how they 鈥渄idn鈥檛 complain鈥 about what happened to them. He admitted he had more to learn.聽
Victoria Matsuko Wigal was there, too. A willowy college student from upstate New York, she was serving her second stint as a volunteer with the DU archaeology program. Her friends back home didn鈥檛 understand why she liked to spend summers in the heat and dust of the place where her grandfather had been incarcerated during WWII. 鈥淔or me, personally, it鈥檚 really healing to be out here,鈥 she says. As we stood on a barrack foundation, she gazed out at a rolling carpet of sand sage and shortgrass that bent toward the earth with each gust of wind. 鈥淚t鈥檚 beautiful…the landscape, and also being able to connect with people who care so much about this and preserving the history and not letting it be forgotten.鈥
But the fight to tell the true story of what happened at Amache isn鈥檛 over yet. Just two years after achieving status as a National Historic Site, advocates faced another chapter in that decades-long battle. In March 2025, President Donald 麻豆果冻传媒 Executive Order 14253, 鈥淩estoring Truth and Sanity to American History,鈥 channeled the rhetoric of the Lillian Baker era, declaring, 鈥It is the policy of my Administration to restore Federal sites dedicated to history, including parks and museums, to solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing.鈥澛
That May, the secretary of the interior outlined the steps managers of public lands, including all national parks, had to take in accordance with the order. This included identifying any language that 鈥渋nappropriately disparages Americans past or living鈥 and replacing it with 鈥渃ontent that focuses on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people.鈥 The public has been conscripted to participate in the government鈥檚 surveillance through the use of QR codes installed at the sites to report any 鈥渟igns or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans.鈥澛
Shortly after the QR codes were posted at the entrance to Amache, an anonymous visitor taped a satirical response next to them. Mimicking the kind of history the Trump administration seemed to be looking for, the note read: 鈥淚t was the Spring of 1942 and President Roosevelt decided to treat people of Japanese descent [to] a fabulous free vacation at one of ten fantastic luxury resorts built just for the occasion.鈥 It went on, twisting the wartime incarceration story into a sugarcoated dreamscape before concluding, 鈥渋t was most certainly a once in a lifetime experience that none would ever forget.鈥澛
For now, none of the actual interpretative signage at Amache has been changed. Its materials passed the Department of the Interior鈥檚 review because the law that created the Amache National Historic Site explicitly names its purpose as being to preserve, protect, and interpret its history as it relates to the 鈥渋ncarceration of civilians of Japanese ancestry during World War II.鈥 Secretarial and executive orders do not supersede law, so NPS staff is legally obliged to tell the story of the mass civilian incarceration that happened at Amache鈥攁 narrative that doesn鈥檛 easily lend itself to celebrating the advancement of 鈥渓iberty, prosperity, and human flourishing.鈥澛
Still, as the NPS and its grassroots partners head into the multiyear process of developing the General Management Plan for Amache, many worry about funding cuts and the current administration鈥檚 pattern of acting extrajudicially. But the Amache community has a playbook for challenges like this. They will do what they did when the U.S. government first stripped them of their rights and property; what they did when forced to rebuild their lives within the camp and then again after; and what they did in the face of earlier attempts to whitewash their history: they鈥檒l keep going. Speaking from his home in Littleton, Amache Alliance member Derek Okubo underscored the fact that, like his late father, Henry, and Thomas Shigekuni, he just wants the right to speak truthfully about what had happened to their community. 鈥淲e鈥檙e going forward no matter what,鈥 Okubo said. Then, his voice catching, 鈥淭hat was my dad speaking.鈥
Miles to Go: Stories of Us at 250
- Foreword: America, A Work in Progress
- The Semiquin
- The Afterlife of Amache
- Dispatch: Denver, Colorado
- Marco鈥檚 Journey
- Making an Impact
- Dispatch: Chicago, Illinois
- If You Build It, Will They Come?
- Echoes of the Past
- More than Neighbors
- Dispatch: Washington, DC
- The 鈥淣ew Georgia鈥
- Hurricane Katrina鈥檚 Lessons
- Dispatch: New Orleans, Louisiana