school teacher who’s responsible for raising public awareness of Camp Amache’s history. Hopper teaches college-credit studies in the morning, and
coaches various sports in the afternoons at Granada High School. He remembers fi nding a 50th anniversary reunion book for Amache internees, and deciding to contact them. Months later, he says, a woman called him on behalf of the surviving internees. Soon after that conversation, the intern- ees began sending him mementos of their time in Granada— photo albums, letters, paintings, sculptures. (Some of the items will be on display at History Colorado Center.) Hopper established a class in which motivated high school
students help with the growing collection of artifacts. You’ll fi nd those items in the old City Hall, next to the town’s only gas station, under the care of the Amache Preservation Society. The museum is open 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays and staffed by Hopper’s students. Guests can page through the photo albums—some in rough
Yoshimitsu “Bob” Fuchigami, a 31-year AAA member, and former internee of Amache.
we wanted to see the site, as well as the small museum that houses the Amache Preservation Society. We looked up our route to Granada
using the AAA TripTik app for iPhone. Two routes were available—one more rural with far fewer services, and another along the I-25 corridor and Santa Fe Trail. We fi lled the car with gas for the route we selected: east on I-70 to U.S. 40/287, south through Eads to U.S. 50, then east through Lamar to Granada. As EnCompass drove south through
Eads, we saw a sign for the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site, also featured at the new History Colorado Center. The sign marks a small National Park Service offi ce with a bookstore and wall display about the massacre site, which is 23 miles’ drive east of Eads. The offi ce is open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and closed on Federal holidays. Once on U.S. 50, the Santa Fe Trail
road, we headed east, and about a mile outside Granada, pop. 640, we saw a sign, “Camp Amache,” pointing south. But we pressed on, because we planned to meet John Hopper, a local high
30 EnCompass March/April 2012
Internees arrive in 1942 after a long train journey from assembly centers in California, bringing with them only what they could carry.
www.AAA.com
shape and others with ornate covers. Hopper says internees regularly visit the collection, some
of them sticking pins into a map of the camp, showing the block and barrack they occupied. EnCompass counted 76 pins, but Hopper said that, if he had thought to put up the map when the collection fi rst opened, “there would be four hundred and 76 pins.” Hopper gave me a copy the commencement speech by an
Amache student, Marion Konishi, delivered on June 5, 1943. The speech concludes: “Can we the graduating class of Amache Senior High
School still believe that America means freedom, equality, security and justice? Do I believe this? Do my classmates believe this? Yes, with all our hearts, because in that faith, in that hope, is my future, our future, and the world’s future.” The hardships of Amache produced heroes of war: Thirty- one Amache men wearing U.S. uniforms died in battle fi ghting
© AAA Colorado/Keith Kaiser
Courtesy of History Colorado
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