“He probably has stronger thoughts than almost anybody I know,” Tonai, who now works as an exhibit preparator and photographer for the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, says of his father. “My dad was a teenager, just coming into his own, and he was always very angry about it. He has always supported preserving the memory of the camp.”
The effort on the federal level officially began in late 2019 with the John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act. The massive legislation included dozens of initiatives and effectively launched a study of the Amache site’s suitability. But months later, the gears ground to a halt: Most significantly, the COVID-19 crisis stifled the normal schedule of public comment and wreaked havoc on the prescribed timeline.
“Right now, it’s kind of in limbo,” Hopper says. “The way I’m looking at it, we’ve lost a year with the COVID deal, not being able to meet in person.”
An already lengthy federal process — the study and recommendation alone have a three-year timeline — suddenly seemed to get nudged even further into the future. For Hopper, who has seen his work with Amache become an all-consuming passion, the prospect of handing the lion’s share of the responsibility for the site to the government experts sooner rather than later offers peace of mind — not to mention the chance for actual retirement.
“It’s something that not only has become a part of my life, but it’s on my mind just about every day — doesn’t matter what day,” Hopper, 57, says of Amache. “It’s always on my mind. It’s made me what I am, from an educational standpoint with these students. I want to make sure that the school continues to be involved as well.”
At a time when rural Colorado struggles with declining population and attendant economic challenges, Amache offers restorative opportunities. The work of the Amache Preservation Society has already helped restore a valuable historic and cultural marker. And in combination with both the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site near Eads and a similar attraction at Bent’s Old Fort in La Junta — each less than an hour’s drive from Granada – it creates a historic triangle on the Eastern Plains.
National Park designation would only add to the attraction, Hopper figures.
“People would be a lot more aware,” he says. “Once they’re down here and tour all these sites, there are a lot of others. We’ve got the Santa Fe Trail, plus museums in Holly and Las Animas. We’re building up a decent historical area for people to come and see.”
At Amache, structures from barracks to the camp’s guard and water towers have been reconstituted on the grounds. Memorials have been constructed or restored. An original recreation center at the camp that had been moved to Granada’s city park was returned to its original foundation. A museum in town has slowly collected an impressive array of artifacts from the era.
“People come from a long distance away to see Amache,” Hopper says. “That’s a help for the community, as well as people spending dollars and time in Granada. That’s the other thing: You become a National Park site, and it helps the community with more jobs and kind of solidifies that the community will stay.”
COVID-19-related delays in the federal study’s public engagement effort, which stalled last spring, could push that portion of the process to next spring, notes Jeremy Sweat, chief of planning and compliance for the National Park Service regional office in Lakewood. Some meetings scheduled to take place in person, including some on the West Coast to accommodate original internees and their families, had to be canceled.
Once a new NPS team has been assembled, he adds, some virtual meetings will be added to the schedule to receive public input. When that portion of the process is complete, the federal staffers will start analyzing the four key criteria that figure into the study recommendation to the Secretary of the Interior, who then forwards the report to Congress.
Congress isn’t bound by the findings, which are designed simply to inform lawmakers. Any member could still introduce a bill to establish Amache as a unit of the National Park System, Sweat says.
Checking the boxes
The Amache incarceration site already has been designated a National Historic Landmark. But to become a unit of the National Park System, it would need to pass four additional tests during the site study. On average, about one in four studies results in a recommendation for inclusion.
Even with approval, the NPS notes, it can take as long as 10 years to get a new national park up and running.
For now, Amache is hoping to clear four hurdles of the site study:
Significance: Amache’s status as a National Historic Landmark already pretty well checks this box.
“We typically still do some level of analysis to make sure nothing has changed, that there’s no new information,” Sweat says. “But in this case, it’s safe to say it’s nationally significant.”
A couple of other factors also weigh in its favor.
Gov. Ralph Carr’s welcoming the arrival of Japanese Americans, in stark contrast to many other reactions across the country and even sentiment within Colorado, bolsters the site with a unique set of historical circumstances. Additionally, Amache experienced much less conflict and violence than other incarceration sites.
Suitability: This is where the process becomes even more detailed, as the focus turns to the site’s uniqueness and whether or not it’s represented or protected by other entities. Here, the study completes a comparative analysis to other sites — and among the 10 camps that were scattered across the interior U.S., a handful of others have already achieved federal recognition.
Sweat explains that the study looks at whether other sites tell the exact same story or have similar resources. But he emphasizes that the fact that there are other incarceration sites in other areas of the country in no way disqualifies Amache from consideration. The U.S. has many federally recognized sites that reference the same general historical narrative, such as the Civil War or Revolutionary War or even other Japanese American sites.
“As long as it’s demonstrated that the site has a unique history and resources, that doesn’t count against it,” he says.
Feasibility: This portion of the study looks at whether the site is of sufficient size and appropriate configuration to allow the NPS to manage it at a reasonable cost. Sweat says that access is a key factor here — whether the site can be accessed safely by visitors, but also that it can be acquired as federal land.
The Amache grounds are owned by the town of Granada, which Hopper says currently seems disposed to offer the land for a National Park site. But that can change with the political winds, which is another reason Hopper would like to see this process move quickly.
“With local elections, you never know,” he says. “Maybe down the road people say maybe we don’t want to donate the land now. That’s why I’d like to move this along. But it’s not going to move along anytime soon.”
Need for NPS management: The question here is whether NPS management is the “clearly superior” approach to other options. Could a site continue under its current management or move to management by some other entity, whether state or federal, private or nonprofit.
The fact that Amache already benefits from the management of the Amache Preservation Society doesn’t necessarily mean that this is the optimal approach — and won’t count against the site in the study.