Junior Ranger

Meet Rose and Mas, who will be your guides through Amache.

NPS © Scott Goto

Become an Amache Junior Ranger

Amache National Historic Site is excited to debut its Junior Ranger program. This booklet was developed with the Amache community to tell their story to a variety of audiences. Experience what life was like for children at Amache through the eyes of Rose and Mas, your guides.

For Junior Rangers

If you already have your booklet, this page will help support your learning. If you would like a book, contact us or print a copy.

Stories are an important part of Amache. They help us piece together what life here was like. Your Junior Ranger book is first and foremost a story. The activities will help
you connect to the story a little more. This webpage will help you do the same.

For parents

This webpage will provide more context on the story presented in the booklet to help you answer any questions your Junior Rangers may have. You help facilitate learning about Amache through the optional questions included in these sections.

 

Activity Support

What we could carry

Signs telling people they had to leave their homes and report to a train station began showing up in Japanese American neighboorhoods in the spring of 1942. Families were forced to decide what to bring with them to a new place they knew nothing about. Some people destroyed things they brough to the United States from Japan. They were afraid Japanese things might make people think they weren't loyal to the United States. Things they couldn't bring had to be sold or left with a trusted neighbor. Many people lost their homes and businesses.

Have you been through something and you didn't know what would happen next? How did you feel?

A long journey

When people were first removed from their homes, they were sent to temporary detention centers called "assembly centers." They lived there for months while the more permanent "relocation centers" were built. People from the Central Valley of California or Sonoma County were taken to the Merced Assembly Center at the Merced County Fairgrounds. People from Los Angeles were sent to the Santa Anita Assembly Center at the Santa Anita Racetrack. At Santa Anita, some people were forced to live in horse stalls that still smelled of manure. Some people remember the walls of the barracks at Merced not reaching the ceiling.

After a few months, people were loaded on trains and sent to their "permanent" residence. While nearly everyone from Merced ended up at Amache, only some from Santa Anita were sent there.

 

Getting to know Amache

At its peak, Amache held nearly 7,500 people! That made it the tenth largest population center in Colorado at the time. Each block had 12 barracks, a mess hall, a bath house, and a recreation hall. Up to 300 people lived in a block.

If you are unable to visit Amache in person, you can still explore the site using this interactive map.

What is a map legend? A map legend helps you know how to ready a map. Important features like roads, buildings, or points of interest are given a symbol and a meaning. This helps you know what you're looking at on the map!

Where else would you want to explore at Amache? What other places do you think Rose and Mas might need to make sure they know how to get to?

 

NPS © Scott Goto

Cramped quarters

When families first moved into the barracks at Amache, they were basically empty. Rooms had beds for each person, a coal-burning stove, and a single lightbulb. Any furniture people wanted had to be hand built with wood they found around camp. Some people strung sheets across the rooms to create dividers for added privacy.

How does your home differ from the living space you made for your family? Are there things missing from the space you drew that you need?

We are Japanese Americans

The Japanese writing system uses three alphabets, Hirigana, Katakana, and Kanji. Katakana, the chart in the book, is used for loaner words. Loaner words are word that come from one language but have been adopted into another.

What loaner words do you use?

Hint: There are no distinct "L" sounds in Japanese. If you need an "L" sound for your name, try an "R" sound instead. For example, "la" become "ra."

Growing a garden

Not long after arriving at Amache, people started planting gardens. Some were victory gardens that were common across the US during WWII. They provided familiar vegetables to mess halls and allowed the daily food rations to be stretched further.

Others were more ornamental and a way to make the harsh landscape more livable. Some even included water features, like koi ponds or waterfalls. The gardens were created with found materials like chunks of concrete left over from the site's construction.

Both types of gardens helped provide a sense of normalcy, tranquility, and comfort to the gardeners and other incarcerees.

Do you have a garden at your home? What kind of plants do you grow?

 

Keeping busy

There were many activities people at Amache participated in to keep themselves busy. Art was a very popular hobby. People took drawing classes, painted, and learned wood carving. Some people learned more traditional Japanese arts like bonsai and origami.

What hobbies do you do to pass the time?

If you need help folding your origami frog, check out this video.

 

Duration:

3 minutes, 10 seconds

A tutorial for the origami frog activity in the Amache Junior Ranger booklet.

 

Finding community

Amacheans worked hard to create community inside the camp. Churches, clubs, and sports teams all helped make the camp feel more like normal life. Recreation halls often served as the meeting places for these organizations. Other recreation halls were used to host dances, socials, and movie showings. One of the recreation halls was turned into a silkscreen printing shop. The Silk Screen Shop made flyers for the different social events around the camp.

What communities are you a part of? Why do you think it's important to be part of a community?

Starting over

In early 1945, the government removed the exclusion orders on the West Coast and announced that the incarceration centers would close. It took many months for people to feel comfortable enough to leave the place they had lived for the last three years. People didn't know if they would have anything to return to if they went back to California. They weren't sure if they would face racism in the communities they moved to. Some people from Amache chose to stay in Colorado and move to Denver, where there was already a community of Japanese Americans. Others moved further east, to places like Chicago. Some chose to stay in the local area, where they were able to find work with farmers. Many chose to return to California or other parts of the West Coast. On October 15th, 1945, the last resident left Amache and the camp closed.

What kinds of changes in your life have made you feel unsure at first, and how did you get used to them?

Moving on

Leaving camp was hard for many families. Many that chose to return to the town they lived before incarceration returned to nothing. People who chose to move to a new place had find a new community. Both groups had to start their lives over. For many adults, being incarcerated felt very shameful and they did not speak of it.

After Amache closed, the site was mostly unused. In the early 1990s, a history teacher at the local high school encouraged his students to learn more about the site and its history. The class project evolved into the Amache Preservation Society (APS), a volunteer organization of high school students who helped take care of the site. They were the primary caretakers of Amache for nearly 30 years, until the National Park Service took over management in 2024. The APS and the work of the students is a major part of the reason Amache is now part of the National Park Service.

Do you have any places that are important to you that you would like to see protected?

 

NPS © Scott Goto

Returning to Amache

In 2008, Denver University started the Amache Archeology Field School. College students came out to Amache to help learn how become archeologists. A few years later, survivors and descendants joined the students for the field school. It gave survivors and descendants a chance to connect and learn more about their history. For some survivors, being at the site helped them remember things they thought they had forgotten.

What is an object that is important to you? What would it tell someone about your life today?

Remembering

Every May, Amache survivors and descendants travel back to the site in something called a pilgrimage. This is a chance for them to pay honor to the experience they and their families had here. It is a time of remembering, honoring, learning, and healing.

The monument inside the columbarium has the word "irei" carved into it. Irei means "soul consoling place." What does that mean to you? Do you have a soul consoling place?

Why do you think people might want to remember difficult parts of their life? Why is it important to remember places like Amache?

 

Create a Junior Ranger pledge

Congradulations on completing the Amache Junior Ranger booklet! Your last task is to write your very own Junior Ranger pledge. A pledge is a type of promise. When you take the Junior Ranger pledge, you are making a promise to keep exploring, learning about, and protecting special places so people can enjoy them in the future.

What promise can you make to explore, learn about, and protect places like Amache National Historic Site?

To get your Amache Junior Ranger badge

If you are planning on visiting Amache National Historic Site, you can turn your booklet in at the Amache Museum to recieve your badge. If you can't visit in person, email us pictures of your completed booklet or mail your booklet to:
Amache Junior Ranger Program
PO Box 44
Granada, CO 81041