The Burlington Hotel

For many Japanese Americans, a stay at the Burlington Hotel at 22nd and Larimer streets was a first stop in Five Points.

In 1944 out of 22,000 Japanese Americans released from the 10 concentration camps that year, the largest number to head to one place, was the 5,000 that relocated to Chicago. Denver was second with 2,507 former prisoners hoping to start new lives. After the war, the Japanese population in Colorado swelled to 11,700, with almost half living in Denver.

One reason that Japanese Americans found it easy to resettle in Denver was that the foundations of the community had been laid decades before World War II, and since Japanese weren't rounded up during the war (though they certainly faced racism and their freedoms were limited by authorities), those institutions were still in place.

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TRANSCRIBED INTERVIEW WITH MARY JANE OKAMATSU and MILTON DOMOTO

We ended up at Heart Mountain in Wyoming, but I heard stories about- [interrupted: you were really little right?]. I was born there. I was born in camp. So they went to Heart Mountain, and then came to Colorado. [They] couldn't find housing and lived in the Burlington Hotel. [They] finally found housing there and then kind of moved around.

When I look back, when I was a child, I didn't think about that too much. About the hardships that they had to encounter to give us a life, but it's amazing. I look back and I feel kind of bad and sad, but it makes me stronger, I think. I hope.