This week’s readings touched on the Japanese American experience during WWII. I thought it might be nice to have some more information on Amache, the camp discussed in Clark and Skiles (2010)’s article.
http://coloradopreservation.org/projects/current-projects/granada-relocation-center/
What is most surprising to me is the scale of these camps. Hawaii never experienced this scale of relocation, only a small number of politicians and teachers were relocated as a result of the War Relocation Act, so to realize that 8000 people were forcibly moved to just one of these camps is astounding. Aside from the work done at Amache, I am not familiar with other archaeological projects that have looked at Japanese internment.
I too was surprised by these numbers, Lauryl. It’s amazing (disheartening, really) how little information on Japanese Internment makes its way into (at least my) high school history curricula. The often romanticized narrative of good vs. evil narrative dominates presentations of WWII but of course does really does not hold up under scrutiny. Japanese Internment, the Bombing of Dresden, the story of the MS St. Louis are but a few of the examples that highlight our need for a more complicated history of this period.