The Times podcast: The fight to preserve Japanese American concentration camps
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They stand across the West in ruins, ghostly apparitions of one of the darkest moments in American history. Concentration camps, 10 in total, built during World War II to incarcerate 120,000 Japanese Americans for the crime of not being white.
But only two are designated as national sites, Manzanar in California and Minidoka in Idaho. Now, a bill in Congress seeks to designate a third concentration camp as a historic site, the Granada War Relocation Center in southeast Colorado, better known as Camp Amache.
At a time when hate crimes against Asian Americans continue to rise, activists say it couldn’t come at a more important time.
Today, we’ll talk with Caitlyn Kim, a Colorado Public Radio reporter who’s covering the push to turn Camp Amache into a national historical site. And we’ll speak with Bruce Embry, who has been making an annual pilgrimage to Manzanar for more than 50 years. Embry’s mother was incarcerated there.
Host: Gustavo Arellano
Guests: Colorado Public Radio reporter Caitlyn Kim and Manzanar Committee co-chair Bruce Embry
More reading:
Sue Kunitomi Embrey, 83; Former Internee Pushed for Historic Status of Manzanar
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