An internment camp used to hold over 10,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II was declared America’s newest national park site on Thursday.
The Amache camp in Granada, Colorado, was used between 1942 and 1945. Over the course of that time, it held more than 10,000 Japanese internees, with a peak population of 7,310, the National Park Service said in a release.
More than two-thirds of them were U.S. citizens.
Amache National Historic Site is the seventh park site addressing the forced incarceration of Japanese-Americans during the war.
“Amache’s addition to the National Park System is a reminder that a complete account of the nation’s history must include our dark chapters of injustice,” NPS Director Chuck Sams said.
The site features a cemetery, a monument, a road network and several reconstructed and restored buildings dating back to World War II. These include barracks, a recreation hall, a guard tower and a water tank, NPS officials said.
President Biden signed the bill declaring the park site in 2022, while Thursday’s formal establishment had to wait until Granada officials acquired the land to establish the park.
“The fact that we achieved National Historic Site status is an achievement for all of the people who passed through there … They lost so much, and yet they remained resilient. … They have a story to tell,” Carlene Tanigoshi Tinker, who was moved to Amache with her family when she was three and who helped lobby for national park status, told Brown Political Review last year.
Prior to its national park designation, Amache was put in the National Register of Historic Places in 1994 and was made a National Historic Landmark in 2006.