Rebooting Fort Bliss

History’s echoes of misery at Fort Bliss remind us that we don't erase our mistakes—we recycle them.

Fort Bliss, Texas. Once upon a time, the U.S. government called it a camp for “alien enemies.” Barbed wire, watchtowers, the whole works. They brought Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans here in the early 1940s. Men like Brian Niiya’s grandfather, who was arrested on the night of Pearl Harbor because he edited a Japanese-language newspaper. No tr…