The U.S. Department of Interior today awarded $291,025 for the reconstruction of a water tower, water tank and a guard tower at the Granada Relocation Center in southeast Colorado, where 7,597 Japanese-Americans were forced to move during World War II.
Colorado Preservation Inc. submitted the grant application.
An architect, engineer, contractor and archeologist will be hired to do the work and interpretive panels will be fabricated and installed.
The Granada Relocation Center, also known as Camp Amache, contained 30 blocks of residential barracks, each with its own mess hall, laundry and shower rooms. Children attended school, while adults worked on farms growing crops such as alfalfa and corn.
Several hundred young men held at Amache volunteered for the U.S. Army, and 31 were killed serving with the highly decorated 442nd regiment combat unit, composed entirely of Japanese-Americans.
In 2006, then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton designated the Amache site a National Historic Landmark. The landmark is southwest of Grenada.
The grant to the Granada Relocation center was one of 24 grants totaling $2.9 million announced todaythat will be used to preserve and interpret the camps where Japanese Americans were confined during World War II.
“The internment of Japanese Americans during World War II is an unfortunate part of the story of our nation’s journey, but it is a part that needs to be told,” said Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar. “As Winston Churchill noted, ‘those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.’
“If we are to live up to the ideals expressed in the Constitution,” Salazar said, “we must learn not only from the glorious moments of our nation’s history but also from the inglorious moments.”
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com.
