It wasn’t long ago when more than 125,000 people of Japanese descent were rounded up across the U.S. and herded into concentration camps. The purges started in 1941 and continued through March 1946—six months after World War II ended. Many of the internment camps were built on unceded Native land across 14 states.
One of those macabre sites, Fort Lincoln Internment Camp in Bismarck, North Dakota, incarcerated 1,850 people. Later, former inmate Itaru Ina described his experience there: “The war is over, but I’m still in a snow country prison,” Ina said.
Today, the former internment camp in Bismarck is home to United Tribes Technical College (UTTC), a private tribal land–grant community college with almost 900 students. Family members of those imprisoned and local Indigenous groups are working with MASS Design Group on a memorial for the Japanese-Americans imprisoned there over 80 years ago.
A Mass Memorial
The memorial will be called Snow Country Prison Memorial, named after Ina’s poem. Today, Dr. Satsuki Ina, a community trauma consultant, and daughter of poet Itaru Ina, is on the project team.
“Mass incarceration, mass removal from homes, separation of families, loss of material and generational wealth; all of these things have impacted both communities,” Dr. Satsuki Ina said. “Being allies and friends and caring about each other and supporting one another gives us a stronger voice to prevent injustices from happening again.”
The memorial by MASS Design Group, descendants, and UTTC officials will pay tribute to the 1,100 Issei (first generation Japanese immigrants) and 750 Nisei (second generation U.S. citizens) forced to stay at Fort Lincoln Internment Camp.
Snow Country Prison Memorial will be sited in the 6,000-square-foot courtyard of UTTC’s Education Building. The site, MASS Design Group said, will provide respite for families of those formerly interned, students, and visitors to learn about the former internment camp. The architecture is meant to convey “resistance to oppression and the power in mutual support and solidarity across oppressed groups.”
The effort dates back several decades. After the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 was passed, former prisoners were sent apology letters from the federal government, and $20,000 in reparations. Then, in the early 1990s, descendants of prisoners in the Fort Lincoln Internment Camp began the hard work of unearthing archival materials about North Dakota’s carceral sites.
Using Kintsugi
Today, the design team at MASS shepherding the project includes principal-in-charge Joseph Kunkel, advising principal 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, the design is deeply informed by history. Slate roof tiles from the former prisons are being repurposed for wall cladding using traditional construction methods derived from Japanese culture. “The design takes its cue from the craft of kintsugi, a process used in Japanese ceramics to mend broken pottery and transform it into something even more valuable,” Udvardi said.
“Kintsugi is represented at multiple scales across the memorial: from the undulating reclaimed slate-clad gabion walls that carve around a central gathering area, to the niche cascading up the memorial wall to hold visitors’ offerings,” Udvardi continued. “Our hope is that this design can honor the spirit of endurance and solidarity that both Japanese Americans and Native Americans exemplified on this site across history.”
Construction has already begun on phase 1 of the memorial which yielded a renovation to the UTTC Education Building’s porch, and a new amphitheater for drum circles, gatherings, and ceremonies.
The design team is currently trying to raise $17,000 for phase 2 of the project. That capital will be used to prepare tiles, etch them with the names of interned peoples, instill a timeline of the site, and create entrance markers.
UTTC hopes to finish the project by August 2025.
