Posted inColoradans, News, Politics and Government

President’s signature makes it official: Colorado’s Amache site now part of National Park Service

The decades-long effort to ensure lasting recognition of Colorado’s Granada War Relocation Center — also known as Camp Amache — finally reached the finish line Friday as President Joe Biden signed legislation making it a national historic site. In a White House ceremony, the president’s signature gave final approval to the bill that will place […]

Posted inOpinion

Littwin: Camp Amache, the oft-forgotten World War II internment camp, is now officially remembered

Sometimes, even as a cynical columnist, you find yourself moved to write about something truly good, something extraordinary, something — OK, I don’t want to get carried away here, because this story also has the expected opposition, setbacks and struggle — that shines a light on the fact that, contrary to what you might hear […]

Posted inColoradans, News

In the wake of anti-Asian violence, Colorado congressmen push Amache’s designation as National Historic Site

The recently stalled push to bring the Amache incarceration camp into the National Park system got an energy boost Wednesday through a bipartisan bill to designate the square-mile on Colorado’s southeastern plains, where more than 7,000 Japanese Americans were held during World War II, a National Historic Site. The bill, sponsored by U.S. Reps. Joe […]

Posted inColoradans, COVID, News, Politics and Government

Push to get Colorado’s Amache internment camp a national park designation interrupted by coronavirus

At first, the trip unfolded as just an academic tracing of family history.  John Tonai had for years heard the stories from his father, Minoru, about the Amache internment camp in southeastern Colorado, where the U.S. government transported thousands of Japanese Americans from California and held them behind barbed wire and guard posts for three […]

Posted inColoradans, News, Water

Opponents refuse to play on Branson’s hardscrabble football field. Now the town needs a(nother) miracle.

The athletic field at the far northeast corner of Branson’s town limits had sat mostly idle since the 1980s, when it was last used for baseball and still held memories as home to a 1967 high school championship team. Without baseball, any pretense to athletic glory literally turned to dust as the field blended with […]

Posted inBook Excerpts, SunLit

The story of a dismal chapter in U.S. history didn’t end with internment camps

Denny Dressman is a former award-winning reporter, editor and senior executive who concluded a 42-year newspaper career in 2007 when he retired from The Rocky Mountain News after 25 years there. A member of the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame and a past president of both the Colorado Press Association and the Colorado Authors’ […]