Japanese-American wartime internment site becomes newest US National Park

America’s newest national park commemorates a crime committed against Japanese-American citizens during the upheaval of global war.

February 19 is the Day of Remembrance of Japanese Incarceration During World War II. To mark the occasion, the United States National Park Service announced the opening of a new park in Colorado commemorating this unfortunate event and its survivors. Meanwhile, a similar park is under construction in Hawaii, but NPS won’t way when that park will open.

During the Second World War, the United States government famously forced thousands of citizens of Japanese ancestry into a network of ten concentration camps. Never charged with any crimes, the government nevertheless imprisoned these Japanese-Americans for the duration of the war, arguing that they posed a national security risk.

One of these detention centers, the Granada Relocation Center, was established in an isolated corner of the southeastern Colorado plains back in 1942 shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The site is about a three-hour drive from Denver.

Nicknamed Amache by the prisoners held there, the center was among the US federal government’s largest wartime internment camps. Now it’s a commemorative public park after the National Park Service and Department of the Interior formally announced the opening of the Amache National Historic Site. Amache becomes the newest protected area under the National Park Service’s network of parks and monuments.

“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,” Department of the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement. Haaland paid a visit to Amache in 2022 after the government announced that NPS would take over the land and convert it into a park.

At its peak, Amache held over 7,300 detainees. These were not prisoners of war captured in combat with Japan, but rather American citizens imprisoned under a presidential executive decree. Thousands of Americans born and raised in the United States were unjustly imprisoned in the government’s network of ten Japanese-American concentration camps.

In March 2022, President Joe Biden signed the Amache National Historic Site Act formally incorporating the lands on which Amache once stood to the US National Park System’s holdings. A coalition of historical preservationists donated the Amache site to the government. Amache is the first national park created under Biden’s presidency.

National Park Service Director Chuck Sams said the inclusion of Amache in NPS’s park system is important as “a reminder that a complete account of the nation’s history must include our dark chapters of injustice.”

Former concentration camp detainees, their family members, and residents of Granada have been maintaining the grounds for years as they fought to get the federal government to recognize the site. The foundations of buildings and Amache’s road network remain intact and can be easily seen in satellite photos.

NPS announced nearly ten years ago that the site of an old detention camp in Hawaii would be converted into a publicly accessible park, but that work is ongoing and the grounds won’t open to the public for some time.

Former President Barack Obama declared the creation of the Honouliuli National Historic Site in Hawaii back in 2015. Though Honouliuli was used as a prisoner-of-war camp, more than 300 Japanese-Americans were detained there.

The Honouliuli site, located at the western edge of Honolulu, was previously owned by Monsanto until the company handed it over to the government. The US government has been working with the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii to develop the Honouliuli National Historic Site ever since.

For now, Honouliuli remains closed to the public and no opening date has been set. NPS says it’s working to prepare the site with facilities, historical markers, and other infrastructure to allow visitors to access and tour the grounds. 

©2023 Public Parks