Almost $300,000 has been awarded by the U.S. Department of the Interior to reconstruct a water tower, water tank and guard tower at the Amache relocation site near Granada where 7,597 Japanese-Americans were forced to move during World War II.
John Hopper, a social studies teacher at Granada High School, has pushed for the site’s preservation since 1993. He said the grant will enable serious reconstruction work to begin.
“I’m excited,” Hopper said. “People have been working on this for years.”
Recently the water tank and parts of the water tower were recovered from an area rancher’s property. The rancher bought them at the end of World War II and bequeathed them to the relocation site when he died.
Hopper and his students have run a museum in Granada dedicated to the relocation site for years. They conduct tours of the grounds, half a mile southwest of the town east of Lamar. Since the museum reopened for the summer three weeks ago, it has had 350 visitors, Hopper said.
Next week, Hopper will travel to Japan to speak about Amache.
Colorado Preservation Inc. applied for the $291,025 grant. It was the largest of 24 totaling $2.9 million announced Friday. They are designed to preserve and interpret the centers where Japanese Americans were confined.
An architect, engineer, contractor and archaeologist will be hired to do the work at the Amache site, and interpretive panels will be fabricated and installed.
Amache included 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.
Colorado Preservation Inc.’s director of preservation programs, Jane Daniels, said that since 2007, the National Park Service has worked with Hopper and Granada residents on a master plan for restoration.
Daniels and Hopper would like to see a “barrack block” built, including a residential barrack, shower rooms, a mess hall and a laundry.
Hopper said long-range plans call for the in-town museum to be moved to a visitor center at the entrance to Amache.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Amache and similar sites need to be preserved.
“If we are to live up to the ideals expressed in the Constitution, 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
