Amache National Historic Site Act

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 2497, offered by my friend, Representative Neguse from Colorado, would establish the Amache National Historic Site in Colorado as a unit of the National Park System.

In 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued an executive order, later enforced by law, to forcibly remove tens of thousands of Japanese Americans, including nearly 70,000 American citizens, from the West Coast to internment centers further inland during World War II. The smallest internment camp was located a mile from Granada, Colorado, and was officially known as Amache. Over 7,000 residents of Japanese ancestry, most of them American citizens, were imprisoned at Amache from 1942 to 1945. The Amache site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1994 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 2005.

Amache is currently owned by the town of Granada, Colorado, and maintained by a group of student volunteers who, led by their high school social studies teacher, are known as the Amache Preservation Society.

During a hearing on the bill in the Natural Resources Committee earlier this year, we heard testimony from an Amache survivor, Mr. Bob Fuchigami. Mr. Fuchigami was just 11 when his family was forcibly relocated to Amache and during his powerful testimony, he said the following about the bill: ``Designating Amache a national park site would shine a light on our forgotten history and help tell a more complete story of America. Amache is our collective story. It is an American story.''

Adding the Amache site to the National Park System will help educate Americans about this dark chapter in our Nation's history and help us not to repeat the mistakes of our past. Sites like Amache help to remind us of the challenges our Nation has faced and the mistakes we have made as we have endeavored to form a more perfect Union.

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