Tragic Legacy of Colorado’s Japanese Internment Camp

When John Hopper was growing up in Las Animas, his mother worked at the local hospital with a man named Emory Namura. Hopper heard people mention that Namura, an administrator, was a former resident of a nearby Japanese internment camp during World War II, yet as far as Hopper could see, no such place existed. He also never learned a thing about the long-gone outpost in high school, and it was only briefly mentioned during a history class he took at Colorado State University.

Hopper returned to eastern Colorado to teach social studies at Granada High School, about 50 miles east of Las Animas, in 1989, and he couldn’t shake the mystery of the facility. So he asked a few students to help interview Namura about what is officially called the Granada Relocation Center. Namura, in turn, put a face on one of America’s most inhumane acts.