This story by Allen Best first appeared on BigPivots.com on July 8, 2025.
Looking back, it’s so easy to see the wrongness of Amache, the place of sagebrush and cactus amid southeastern Colorado’s sandy soils. During World War II, it was briefly the state’s 10th largest population center.
Except, of course, Amache was no city as we normally think of them. It was surrounded by barbed wire fences. Guards in towers wielded both guns and search lights. “Concentration camp” fits if defined as “a place where people are imprisoned not because of any crimes they have committed, but simply because of who they are.”
In the case of Amache, Japanese-Americans were rounded up in California and other West Coast states and put on trains to Colorado. More than two-thirds were American citizens. The action was justified under an executive order issued by President Franklin Roosevelt soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
“Successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage” to the national defense materials, premises, and utilities, said the order. Amache was quickly and shoddily created. In 1943 it housed more than 7,300 people.
The story is told well in a 2024 book, Amache, by Robert Harvey. His parting words haunt: “If citizens of the United States had looked less to political cheerleaders and professional patriots, and more to the constitutional democracy they were fighting to save, evacuation might never have happened.”
On the July 4th weekend, I visited Amache once again, my third or fourth trip there. American flags fluttered along county roads in the hot winds as semi-trucks hauled harvested wheat to grain elevators. Cattle huddled along fences, their tails swishing at flies, as temperatures marched north of 90 degrees.
Amache became a national historic site in 2024. The National Park Service calls it a “prison on the plains.” The federal government then had used a sugar-coated word: the Granada Relocation Center. The closest town was Granada. People got out of prison, but just on passes.
Little other than some concrete foundations remain of the 560 buildings that were once crammed into a one-square-mile area at Amache. Lacking water from the Arkansas River, the hillside lacked the lushness seen in summer-time vegetation at the entrance along Highway 50. Photos/Allen Best
All the 560 buildings cramped together amid the one-square-mile enclosure have been torn down or moved elsewhere. Only a few concrete foundations remain. A warning sign cautions that rattlesnakes might be amid piles of rocks. Now, a new building recreates the barracks where entire families lived and shared single light bulbs. Their spaces, about 500 square feet, were only a little larger than average hotel rooms of today.
Some of those relocated to Amache had been farmers in California. In their parched quarters in Colorado, they applied their skills. One explanatory panel tells how they took tea bags, egg shells, and vegetable scraps to try to create tiny nutritious plots to grow food.
Milton Eisenhower’s words linger. The brother of the future president, Eisenhower headed the War Relocation Authority shortly after it was formed but favored more respectful treatment of Japanese-Americans. In this, he was strongly opposed by governors of most Western states. Ralph Carr, Colorado’s governor, was an exception.
“I have brooded about this whole episode on and off the past three decades for it is illustrative of how an entire society can somehow plunge off-course,” said Eisenhower in 1974.
Two replica buildings have been constructed at Amache in recent years to illustrate the living conditions there from during World War II. Photo/Allen Best
Has our entire society today plunged off-course in our actions regarding immigration? Surely, somebody reading this will say: “But the immigration of today is different. We have LAW-BREAKERS crossing our southern border. OUR immigrant forebearers arrived here legally.”
I grant that critical distinction, but I also see overlap. Today, as in 1942, it is common to demonize whole groups of people. Our president has done this time and again, painting otherwise law-abiding immigrants as criminals capable of the worst crimes. In fact, as statistics from Texas and Georgia show, as a group they are, other than crossing borders to seek better lives, uncommonly law-abiding.
Do we need observance of our laws? Yes, although personally I am far more threatened by people driving 20 and 30 mph over the posted speed limits on our highways. Will a political candidate campaign about restoring law and order to our highways? I doubt it. Easier to provoke fear of “they” and “them.”
Immigration is a difficult, nuanced topic. Instead, we settle for bold and often thoughtless actions. We have granted immigration police great freedom — including, apparently, the ability to violate constitutional rights. The budget reconciliation bill appropriates $45 billion for detention centers. The president wants one in every state.
As in the case of the Japanese-Americans during World War II, we have policies that don’t match the threat or the problem.
We can do better today with our immigration policies. We can do better.
Allen Best publishes the e-journal Big Pivots, which chronicles the energy transition in Colorado and beyond.