Review by Ed Quillen
History – April 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
Amache – The Story of Japanese Interment in Colorado during World War II
by Robert Harvey
Published in 2004 by Taylor Trade Publishing
ISBN 1-58979-038-3
THERE’S A SORDID CHAPTER of American history which should never be forgotten, and it wasn’t all that long ago. In 1943, American citizens were rounded up and taken to concentration camps, one in Colorado, merely on account of their ancestry.
The camp, near the Kansas line in the Arkansas valley, was called Amache. The name came from one of the most interesting women in Colorado history, Amache Ochinee Prowers, a Cheyenne chief’s daughter who married pioneer stockman John Wesley Prowers and helped him build a ranching empire in the Lamar area.
But she’s not the story here. The saga started on the West Coast, where Japanese immigrants settled in the early 20th century. With small farms and small businesses, many prospered. They also suffered from racism; white California in general didn’t like Asian immigrants.
Then came the Japanese surprise attack of December 7, 1941, on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. America was at war, and feared more attacks.
There was the West Coast, the likely Japanese invasion route, with thousands of residents of Japanese descent living near the factories, forts, and airfields vital to national defense. And there was a real fear that mobs might attack those residents when the government’s resources were too strained to protect them.
So the federal government’s concerns were understandable. The response — round up these Japanese-Americans and ship them to the interior — was something that the American government formally apologized for in bills signed by Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
THE POLITICS of the war-time order are confusing by today’s standards. Earl Warren, later to become famous for his concern for individual rights as chief justice of the United States, was then attorney general of California, and he supported the forced relocation. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, never known as a friend of civil liberties, opposed it — he said the FBI was equipped to handle any sabotage or fifth-column subversion on the West Coast.
And President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the great liberal icon, signed the order. Ralph Carr, Colorado’s conservative Republican governor, opposed the relocation (“you can’t put an American citizen in jail for no cause”), but welcomed the internees to Colorado.
The internees could bring only what they could carry — all their other property had to be given away or sold, generally at low prices. They boarded slow trains for the three-day trip to eastern Colorado, where they got off at Grenada and rode trucks for the short ride to the 10,000-acre camp.
Camp life was spartan, but as author Robert Harvey makes clear in this account, it wasn’t entirely grim. The kids went to school and were active in dozens of clubs, as well as sports. Adults worked at the camp, on its fields, or for private employers nearby. They were fed, and they had medical care. Some volunteered for the Army.
In short, while these were concentration camps, they weren’t the death camps of Nazi Germany. They were an over-reaction promoted by some racist California politicians, and the main goal of the federal government was to get the internees to settle in the interior, far from any coast. Government policy was to treat the internees as prisoners of war.
In this well-documented book, Harvey tells the story about as thoroughly and clearly as it could ever be told. Not only did he scour the written records, but he interviewed many former internees, as well as people in nearby towns. The descriptions of camp life, drawn from interviews, are especially vivid, and Harvey’s description and narration are models of clarity.
This small, tightly compact community jutting up from the sand of southern Colorado had — nearly overnight — become the tenth largest city in the state. With an average population of 6,500, Amache had need of emergency services such as fire and police departments. A hospital “employing” some of the best doctors in the country treated every kind of ailment and injury. An employment and welfare office, a post office … and a regularly published newspaper all made Amache seem much like any other normal American community. But the environment surrounding this temporary community was far different than that of a normal community.
Barbed wire surrounded the city. Armed military police walked among the residents of this village. In towers high above sat uniformed men — all of whom had rifles and searchlights pointed in. Although it may have been organized much like other Colorado cities, Amache was filled with inhabitants who neither chose to live there nor wished to remain. But within these confines they would — over the next few years — live, work, and play.
The end for Amache began early in 1945, when the ban on travel to the West Coast was lifted, and internees were soon encouraged to return to their previous homes. Some left as soon as possible; others, who had lost everything in the relocation, wanted to stay in the camp. They eventually had to move in October, for the camp was being closed and dismantled.
Little remains today; Amache is a ghost town, but one that should be remembered. As Harvey explains, “Never before had concentration camps been set up in a nation built on constitutional rights. Never before had so many American citizens been evacuated from their homes and legally interned. Few today vividly remember these American concentration camps; but if Americans are to avoid similar mistakes in the future, they must never be forgotten. Camps like Amache are clear reminders of how even a government built on principles of democracy can fall prey to economic greed and racial injustice. If we are to maintain a government based on equality, we must remember the voices of the past. Only then, will camps like Amache have purpose and meaning.”
And there are memories that affect us today. In the wake of Sept. 11, there were loud voices in some quarters suggesting that there be some sort of round-up of Americans of Arab descent. And there were more sensible voices who pointed out that Amache and similar camps did nothing to increase America’s security 60 years ago.
This book is a well-researched, well-written piece of history. I found only one error, and that was niggling (Amache’s post office couldn’t have had a Zip code, because Zip codes didn’t come along until 1963). Read it if you’ve ever had any curiosity about the interment camps during World War II, or just read it because it’s an engaging account of an important chapter of Colorado and American history.
— Ed Quillen
