On the untamed plains of southeastern Colorado, a single pale-pink rose bloomed this May. Not only was it a tiny sign of life from a community of nearly 10,000 people that unwittingly sat on the site nearly eight decades ago, but its timing was symbolic—as a federal act signed in March would now preserve the lands as a National Historic Site.
Amache, also known as the Granada Relocation Center, was one of 10 incarceration sites that Japanese Americans were forced to live in from 1942 to 1945 during World War II, when long-rooted anti-Asian sentiment spiraled into government-supported discrimination. As soon as President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, the site was quickly built, with the first incarcerees arriving two months after construction started. So many people were forcefully imprisoned at Amache that it became the state’s ninth-biggest city in a flash. But three years after the war ended, the entire program scrapped, and the residents ejected, the community was almost completely razed, seemingly to shield any evidence of what the government had done to its occupants, two-thirds of whom were American citizens.
Despite the perilous circumstances, the Japanese principle of gaman—patiently enduring the unjust with dignity and strength—prevailed, as those confined to life in stark barracks, six families packed into each, and fed basic provisions like boiled hot dogs, somehow managed to build a bearable lifestyle, with schools, stores, a recreational hall, a silk screen studio, a koi pond, and even gardens.
“Even though we were [put] in a place like that, so many people, including my aunt, grew roses to try to make it more like being at home,” says 93-year-old Minoru Tonai, who was given the nickname Min while living at Amache from ages 13 to 16.
Tonai returned to the site this past July with his family. “It brought back a lot of memories, both good and bad,” he says. “When I went to my block and saw the room I was in throughout my stay in Amache, it made me very sad. I got very emotional—[though] I hid my emotion—but it was very emotional for me. I was trying to imagine how my folks would have felt about being forced to be in there and having to do what they could to take care of us.”
While he says there is “a bit of anger of having been sent to this prison when I was an American citizen and had not done any crime,” he also says it’s a “it's a good reminder to the American public that this could happen if we don’t try to uphold all the rights of the citizens and aliens living in the United States.”