Keota boasted 140 residents at its peak in 1919. Proud residents built a school, supported their sports teams and hosted many social events. But the good times didn’t last. Like many towns Colorado’s eastern plains, Keota couldn’t survive falling wheat prices and drought. Novelist James Michener fictionalized the town in his 1974 novel Centennial.


simulated blasting station interactive that includes a plunger to ignite a dynamite charge. uAnd a tribute to the little-known Lincoln Hills Country


Club, founded as a haven for African-Americans, including entertainers—Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Lena Horne— who were denied lodging in Denver.


The second phase exhibit, entitled Living West, is scheduled for


2013, and the third phase, Dreams and Visions, opens in 2014. The public’s interest in these tough subjects didn’t scare


Kathryn Hill, the museum expert and chief operating officer of History Colorado. She served in the 1990s as director of visitor services for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. The Holocaust Museum opened in April 1993 and, despite


the fears reported in the national media that it was too depressing, attracted more than 2 million visitors its first year. “Our success sends a serious message to those who think


the American public has to be entertained,” Hill told The New York Times in 1993. “Museums don't have to shy away from difficult subjects.” Once you’ve been to History Colorado Center, take a drive


to a place where history is alive: The World War II Japanese internment camp called Amache. EnCompass did, and we’ll never forget what we experienced.


Living history


Before driving to Amache, EnCompass met one of its former residents—Yoshimitsu “Bob” Fuchigami, 81, a 31-year member of AAA, and a retired professor living near Evergreen. Fuchigami remembers riding his bicycle as a 12-year-old


on the streets of Yuba City, Calif., and the next week standing behind barbed wire—first in Merced, at an “assembly center,” then at Amache, in southeastern Colorado. American military had forced his Japanese-American parents and seven siblings onto a train and then a truck, leaving behind virtually every- thing they owned and would never see again. Fuchigami remembers the remoteness of Amache, the dust


storms, the shower stalls without doors, the pit toilets, the severe cold in winter and the relentless heat in summer. But


most all, “the loss of freedom … the freedom to ride a bike, to eat when you want, to take a shower in pri- vacy.” His detention remains a mystery


to him, and to the schoolchildren who invite him to speak. “They can’t believe such a thing happened in America,” he says. Fuchigami works closely with a


University of Denver researcher to help Americans remember a part of their history that, apart from their efforts, might have faded from memory. Dr. Bonnie Clark, associate professor


of anthropology at DU and a 15-year AAA member, led DU students in field- work at Amache in 2008 and 2010. “Some people say there’s nothing


to see at Amache, but I beg to differ,” Clark says. The barracks are long gone, but if you walk between the founda- tions facing the entrances, “you’ll see paving stones and other border mate- rial for entryway gardens.” The gardens, common in Japan,


“softened the militarized landscape” of Amache, she says. The intern- ees also planted Chinese Elm and Cottonwoods that created a bird refuge where birders today still find a variety of species. “Ask the internees what they remem-


ber, and the first thing they almost all say is the weather,” Clark says. “It was cold wind in winter, and a hot gritty wind in summer.” Sure enough, a week before


EnCompass drove to Amache last December, a strong wind blew deep snow across the campsite, burying all evidence of its hidden treasures. Still,


EnCompass March/April 2012 29


© Denver Public Library/Western History Collection


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