NDSU writing project earns federal grant to expand Fort Lincoln WWII incarceration education

The Red River Valley Writing Project (RRVWP) at NDSU has been awarded $32,000 from a Norman Y. Mineta Japanese American Confinement Education (JACE) grant. The funding will support efforts to expand and enhance instruction about the incarceration of Japanese Americans at Fort Lincoln in Bismarck, North Dakota, during World War II.

The project, titled “Fragile Freedoms: Regional Perspectives on US WWII Confinement Sites Education Project,” is designed to inspire and equip a new generation of teachers and students to safeguard constitutional freedoms for everyone.

“It is specifically designed to support teachers in developing and delivering thought-provoking lesson plans about this little-known part of North Dakota history to ensure our constitutional freedoms are protected for all,” said Benjamin Melby, a senior lecturer of English at NDSU and RRVWP director.

JACE grants provide federal funding through a competitive process for large, impactful projects that educate the public about the historical importance of Japanese American incarceration during World War II, so that present and future generations may learn from Japanese American confinement and the commitment of the United States to equal justice under the law.

“The Red River Valley Writing project, housed in the NDSU Department of English, provides community engagement, offers professional development to English graduate students, and increases the visibility of NDSU throughout the state,” said Jess Jung, NDSU associate dean for faculty affairs and success. “The Norman Y. Mineta Japanese American Confinement Education grant will enrich WWII curriculum with North Dakota history. This work is vital to NDSU's land grant mission.”

The Red River Valley Writing Project at NDSU is a local site of the National Writing Project (NWP), a nationwide network of 175 university-based sites that prepare approximately 2,500 new teacher-leaders each year. Established in 1974, the organization is dedicated to advancing writing and the teaching of writing, grounded in the belief that writing is fundamental to learning, critical thinking, and engaged citizenship.

“We pride ourselves on a ‘teachers teaching teachers’ model for professional development of leadership capacity,” Melby said.

In his past college writing courses, Melby has assigned a project in which students conduct a visual analysis of WWII Japanese American confinement photography using library research. He said students are surprised to learn that more than 1,800 people of Japanese ancestry were removed from their homes and detained at Fort Lincoln near Bismarck. The Fort Lincoln site housed different populations – Japanese-born community leaders from the West Coast who were arrested in the initial panic after Pearl Harbor, and American-born dissidents from the Tule Lake camp who were seen as agitators and renounced their American citizenship.

“We aim to help teachers and students explore the circumstances surrounding each of these groups, both in the images of prison life and the texts documenting their identities and experiences through the creation and dissemination of place-based educational materials,” Melby said. “The location of this detention facility on the site of the United Tribes Technical College further highlights our project’s essential question: ‘How does the experience of exclusion and incarceration affect a people’s responses to the loss of their human and constitutional rights?’”

The NWP, in collaboration with the National Japanese American Historical Society and the National Park Service, formed the foundation for this grant, Melby said. The initiative required local organizations, in this case, the Red River Valley Writing Project, near historical sites of Japanese American confinement to highlight specific regional perspectives and develop place-based lesson plans that could be shared and implemented in schools within those regions.

“Using place-based educational materials helps students realize that WWII history didn't just happen ‘somewhere else,’ in particular a painful history — it happened in North Dakota, on the grounds of what is now the United Tribes Technical College,” said NDSU interim vice president for research and creative activity Heidi Grunwald.

When the NWP began developing the grant proposal, interest was immediately expressed due to prior work in Japanese American confinement education and the site’s proximity to the Fort Lincoln Internment Camp detention facility. After a letter of intent was submitted, along with supporting research and a rationale outlining why the site would be a strong partner for this work, the grant application was accepted.

“This project aims to bring these materials into present-day schools in a meaningful way that prompts reflection on our past, present and future,” Melby said. “This is a part of North Dakota history, and most North Dakotans, including our teachers and students, don't know it exists.”

While the project is a lesson in history, Melby said, it is also a relevant conversation about issues of today.

“The questions this history raises about constitutional rights, due process and how fear can drive a nation to act counter to its own values are still alive in our current moment,” Melby said. “A new generation of North Dakotans deserves an opportunity to wrestle with these questions by exploring a part of their own state's history.”