The final person left the Granada Relocation Center, known as Camp Amache because of its postal designation, on October 15, 1945, and like many of the Japanese Americans who were incarcerated there, they were given $25 and a train ticket.

Following the Japanese naval attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and amid decades of anti-Asian sentiment in the country, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which allowed the forcible relocation and incarceration of people of Japanese descent from the West Coast to camps in the interior of the country. Camp Amache, in the southeastern corner of the state, was the only incarceration camp during World War II in Colorado.

The completed camp covered one square mile and consisted of barracks, mess halls, administration buildings and recreation buildings. Though the evacuation order was rescinded in January 1945, over three-quarters of the population remained at Amache by June that year.

Amache was the smallest of the federal government’s War Relocation Authority camps, but at its peak housed 7,318 people. The National Park Service estimates that over 10,300 Japanese Americans passed through Amache between its construction in 1942 and closure in 1945.

“CLOSING the relocation center at Amache marks the end of an incident of which we should be thoroughly ashamed,” columnist Lee Casey wrote in the Rocky Mountain News on October 17, 1945. “More than 75,000 American citizens were forcibly removed from their homes and taken under guard to camps without charges being made against them and for the sole offense of being of Japanese descent.”

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Casey goes on to write that despite the “frightful wrong,” people incarcerated at the camps were treated with respect because they had adequate health care and competent teachers. He acknowledged the approximately 1,000 people who left Amache to join the military.

People incarcerated at Amache ran a silkscreen shop, newspaper and cooperative store. The main industry was agriculture with vegetable and field crops.

Amache was designated as a National Historic Site under the Biden administration. The Amache Preservation Society helps maintain the site.