Not long ago, more than 125,000 people of Japanese descent were rounded up across the United States and taken to concentration camps. The purges began in 1941 and continued until March 1946, six months after the end of World War II. Many internment camps were built on unceded Indian lands in 14 states.
One of those gruesome sites, the Fort Lincoln internment camp in Bismarck, North Dakota, imprisoned 1,850 people. Later, former inmate Itaru Ina described his experience there: “The war is over, but I am still a criminal in the land of snow,” Ina said.
Today, the former Bismarck Internment Camp is home to the United Tribes Technical College (UTTC), a private, land-grant tribal network school with approximately 900 students. Family members of those imprisoned and local Indigenous teams are working with MASS Design Group on a memorial to Japanese Americans imprisoned there more than 80 years ago.
The memorial will be named the Snow Country Prison Memorial, in honor of Ina’s poem. Today, Dr. Satsuki Ina, the network’s trauma representative and daughter of poet Itaru Ina, is part of the assignment team.
“Mass incarceration, mass eviction from homes, separation of families, loss of clothing and generational wealth; all of those things have impacted both communities,” said Dr. Satsuki Ina. “Being allies and friends, caring and supporting others gives us a stronger voice to prevent injustices from falling again. »
The memorial through MASS Design Group, their descendants, and UTTC officials will honor the 1,100 Issei (first-generation Japanese immigrants) and 750 Nisei (second-generation U. S. citizens) who were forced to do so at the Fort Lincoln Internment Camp.
The Snow Country Jail Memorial will be located in the 6,000-square-foot courtyard of the UTTC Education Building. The site, MASS Design Group said, will provide respite for families of former internees, academics and visitors to become more informed about the former internment. camp. The architecture aims to convey “resistance to oppression and strength in mutual solidarity between oppressed groups. “
The effort dates back several decades. After the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, the former criminals obtained letters of apology from the federal government and $20,000 in reparations. Then, in the early 1990s, descendants of criminals at the Fort Lincoln internment camp began toiling to exhume files. documents from North Dakota crime sites.
Currently, the MASS design team overseeing the task includes lead director Joseph Kunkel, consulting director Jeff Mansfield, and project manager Mayrah Udvardi; as well as Tya Abe, Rob Lloyd, Taylor Sinclair, Celina Brownotter, Ryann Spang and Therese Graf.
According to Udvardi, design is deeply influenced through history. Slate tiles from former prisons are reused to cover walls using classic structural strategies derived from Japanese culture. “Design is fostered through the art of kintsugi, a procedure used in Japanese ceramics to repair damaged pottery and turn it into something even more valuable,” Udvardi said.
“Kintsugi represents the monument on multiple scales: from the walls of undulating gabions covered with reclaimed slate that carve around a central collecting area, to the cascading niche in the memorial wall to contain visitors’ offerings,” Udvardi continued. “We hope that this design can honor the spirit of permanence and solidarity that Japanese Americans and Native Americans have embodied in the history of this site. “
Construction has already begun on Phase 1 of the memorial, on a renovation of the UTTC Education Building porch and a new amphitheater for drum circles, gatherings and ceremonies.
Lately, the design team is looking to raise $17,000 for Phase 2 of the project. This capital was used to prepare mosaics, engrave the names of the interned villages, identify a chronology of the site, and create frontal markers.
UTTC expects to complete the project by August 2025.