They were called “spies” and targeted because of the way they looked and their heritage.
They were the Japanese-Americans, 120,000 of them, who were rounded up during World War II and imprisoned in camps around the country, mostly in the West.
Congress’ action last week to set aside $38 million for preservation of 10 Japanese internment camps, including one in Colorado, is an important acknowledgment of how wrong things can go when panic drives a nation.
More than 7,000 Japanese-Americans were held in the Granada Relocation Center, in a sparsely populated corner of Colorado 140 miles east of Pueblo. At the time, it was the 10th-largest city in Colorado.
They were taken there not because of what they did, but because of who they were. America was at war with Japan, and the relocation was a considered a “military necessity.”
At Granada, prisoners were kept inside the compound by a four-strand barbed- wire fence, six watch towers and military police guards. It was open for three years.
The legislation Congress sent to President Bush last week authorizes up to $38 million in federal grants for camp restoration.
The money must be matched locally and can be used to rehabilitate facilities and build interpretive centers.
The preservation of these sites is important not only to detainees and their descendants, but to the nation as a whole.
Hank Okubo, a Littleton resident who died in 2002, made it his mission late in life to speak of the monstrous unfairness of the camps.
In what would turn out to be a prescient statement, Okubo told The Denver Post in 2000 about the state of fear that sent him to the Colorado camp as a 13-year-old.
“The fever was so high at the time,” he said. “After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the hatred was so great.”
He added: “I can sure see it happening again.”
The preservation of the camps will honor the message that Hank Okubo and many others have worked to spread.
The camps can also stand as monuments to remind us how easily transient patriotic passions can damage civil liberties and equal rights.
