Sonoma County remembers Japanese internment at Camp Amache

Feb. 19 marked the 75th anniversary of one of the most controversial executive orders in American history. Ten weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the incarceration of people the government thought capable of aiding U.S. enemies in World War II. It led to the interment of 120,000 people of Japanese descent, many of them U.S. citizens. They were relocated to one of 10 hastily built internment camps in California, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado and Arkansas.

A number of Sonoma County Japanese residents were sent to the Granada War Relocation Center, also known as “Camp Amache” in Amache, Colorado. At its peak the camp had 7,567 residents.

Amache was not the most hospitable of environments. Summertime temperatures soared to more than 100 degrees. Freezing winter weather was hard to endure in the 12 thin-walled tar paper barracks. Families were crowded into 20- by 24-foot rooms and while issued pot-bellied stoves, coal was scarce and winter clothing inadequate. Internees huddled under whatever blankets they were issued and shared bath and shower facilities. Food was rationed and served mess-style in halls crowded with 250 to 300 people. Six guard towers equipped with machine guns dissuaded escape.

While there were schools and jobs, including a silk screen plant commissioned to do work for the Navy, not everyone was employed. Some took solace in activities such as art or woodworking.

During the three years of its existence, 412 births were recorded and 107 deaths. Some families received notice of the death of their sons serving overseas while still interned at the camp.

Then in 1944, two and a half years after signing Executive Order 9066, Roosevelt rescinded it. By the fall of 1945, the final internment camps, including Granada, were closed and residents were allowed to return home or relocate elsewhere.

Click through the gallery above to see photo of Camp Amache and the Japanese families whose lives were affected by the order.

Staff writer Mary Callahan contributed to this report