During the first months of World War II, the United States government ordered more than 110,000 men, women, and children of Japanese descent from their homes and incarcerated them in remote, military-style camps as racial prejudice against Japanese Americans and national security fears overrode civil liberties. Two-thirds were American citizens, and not one was ever convicted of espionage or sabotage. From August 1942 to October 1945, more than 10,000 people lived behind barbed wire and under armed guard at the Granada Relocation Center, also known as Amache. With more than 7,300 residents, it became the tenth largest community in Colorado. Internees from many professional, vocational, and educational backgrounds worked in limited camp jobs such as farming and staffing the hospital, while receiving only a fraction of their former income, and about 2,000 children and teens attended camp schools. Families lived in small barracks quarters with no running water or toilet, poor insulation, a single light bulb, canvas cots, thin cotton mattresses, and a coal-burning stove, and evacuees remembered the lack of privacy as one of the most oppressive parts of camp life. The camp's regimented communal life diminished the older generation's traditional leadership role and disrupted family life, affecting Japanese American communities for years after the camp closed. After World War II, hundreds of Amache buildings were removed or demolished and the site was largely abandoned for decades, but former internees began an annual pilgrimage in 1976 to preserve the memory of their internment. Since the 1970s, preservation has been advanced by former internees, local organizations, the Town of Granada, nonprofit groups, and Granada High School students, who formed the Amache Preservation Society in 1990 and have helped maintain the site, cemetery, documents, artifacts, oral histories, and public awareness. Although more than 560 buildings were removed or demolished after the center closed in 1945, its road network, concrete foundations, and the more than 9,500 acres once used for agriculture still reveal the scale and strict military regimentation of the compound.