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A monument recognizing Japanese Americans held at a former incarceration site in Bismarck, North Dakota, will be dedicated at the local United Tribes Technical College on Friday.
About the site: The college sits on the former Fort Lincoln Internment Camp, which housed nearly 2,000 Japanese Americans who arrived in two waves during World War II. Community leaders — including Buddhist priests, newspaper editors and heads of cultural organizations — made up the first group of more than 1,100 Issei who came in February 1942. Some 750 younger Nisei and Kibei arrived three years later from California’s Tule Lake camp after they answered “no” to government loyalty questions and renounced their citizenship, resulting in their classification as deportable “enemy aliens.”
The facility, also known as “Snow Country Prison,” subjected prisoners to harsh winter conditions, including towering icicles and severe blizzards that could trap inmates in their quarters for days.
Event details: The Sept. 5 event will start at 1 p.m. in a courtyard behind the college’s Education Building. Tule Lake-born Satsuki Ina, whose father Itaru was imprisoned at Fort Lincoln — and referred to it as “Snow Country Prison” in a famous haiku — will serve as a keynote speaker. “The Snow Country Prison Memorial is our story as well as the Native American story,” she said in a promo video.
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The program will include a traditional Native American blessing of the site and the Ireicho, which lists every individual of Japanese ancestry imprisoned during the war.
Why this matters: The memorial is the first to formally recognize parallel experiences of oppression between Japanese American and Native American communities. It incorporates kintsugi, a Japanese technique of repairing broken ceramics with gold, and uses original slate tiles from the prison camp’s roofing along with a central drum circle designed as an Indigenous medicine wheel. MASS Design Group created the memorial in collaboration with Japanese American historians and tribal college representatives.
Barbara Takei of the Tule Lake Committee Board of Directors told KFYR during the memorial’s construction in 2023, “Our community is beginning to understand and embrace the stories of wartime dissent. These are the stories that connect us with social justice movements, with other people of color who have fought injustice.”
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The dedication weekend aligns with the college’s 55th annual International Powwow, providing additional opportunities for cross-cultural exchange and reflection.
This story is part of The Rebel Yellow Newsletter — a bold weekly newsletter from the creators of NextShark, reclaiming our stories and celebrating Asian American voices.
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Trending on NextShark: New memorial honors Japanese Americans imprisoned in North Dakota
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AloJapan.com