Prisoners of their Japanese heritage

GRANADA - Block 10-E was home. "Gaman" was their motto - Japanese for grin and bear it. That is how Gary Ono recalls a segment of his childhood, when he came to this desolate part of southeast Colorado, a prisoner because of his Japanese ancestry.

The 68-year-old returned this week to Camp Amache, which from 1942 to 1945 was one of 10 War Relocation Centers that held 120,000 Japanese-Americans out of fear they would sabotage the war effort against Japan.

Ono, whose grandparents were from Japan, was 2 when he arrived in 1942 and 5 when he left, and has few memories of the camp. But the wounds it caused in his family lasted long after an ashamed country set the "evacuees" free.

"I'm kind of here in memory of all my relatives who suffered more," said Ono, of Los Angeles.

Ono and his 16-year-old grandson came to the site Monday to spend two weeks helping a group of archaeology students from the University of Denver. The students are collecting artifacts and studying the former camp, which at its peak held 7,000 Japanese-Americans. Many from the camp served in the military after being interned, and 31 were killed during the war.

The buildings are gone, sold by the government after the war, but the camp remains, an overgrown, snake-infested patchwork of foundations. A National Historic Landmark, it is accessible to the public but rarely visited, a forgotten, open secret of the past.

"It's something we don't necessarily like to talk about," said University of Denver professor Bonnie Clark, overseeing the archaeological survey. "We like to think this isn't the kind of thing we do."

The students are cataloging the artifacts they pull from the dirt, and have found evidence of a proud people clinging to their culture in hard circumstances.

They have unearthed community gardens, sake bottles (alcohol was officially forbidden), wooden sandals, tea bowls, ceramics and makeshift toys.

Ono is the first of many former internees who plan to visit in the coming days, most of whom will travel by bus in an annual pilgrimage from Denver.

The students have learned to share the indignity of what happened here.

"They definitely lost their rights as citizens. In my opinion, I don't think it's right," said Erin Saar, a student from Colorado Springs. "It's nice to see they're coming back, not to relive it, but to memorialize it."

"They're telling us not to forget it, and that's how it should be," Saar said.

Ono has few memories of his days in the camp. Originally from San Francisco, he recalls a long train ride, seeing snow for the first time, playing in the fields. It was sweltering in the summer, frigid in the winter, and his uncle died in the camp.

They were allowed to live in Denver for a period because his father got a job with the military, but were sent back when his mother got sick from conditions in the camp and couldn't care for them.

"There was a period when I was angry. I'm 68 now," Ono said. "I just hope it doesn't happen again."

Clark and others who have worked to restore the camp hope some of the artifacts can find a place in a future museum and visitors center at Camp Amache, a testament to what can happen when hysteria and fear trump liberty.

"We're living in a time when a balance between civil rights and public safety is very much an issue and this is a site where that balance got out of whack," Clark said.

After the "evacuees" were allowed to go home in October 1945, Ono's family returned to San Francisco. Unlike many forced into the camps, their home and business, a confectionery shop, were still theirs. Ono became a photographer, and later produced a video documentary of the Japanese-American experience during the war. He took his children to Amache in 1977 and again in 1989.

When he tried to interview his mother about the camp, she told him it was "bad times" and she would rather forget them.

"I really believe there's a little bit of embarrassment. It's like being raped and having no control," Ono said of the reticence of that generation to talk about the internment camps.

For information on Camp Amache and the restoration effort, visit www.amache.org.