Train cars pulled into Bismarck on Feb. 9, 1942, carrying 415 Japanese Americans caught up in a fearful backlash of the bombing of Pearl Harbor as the United States declared war on Japan.

The men were taken to an "internment" or "concentration" south of Bismarck, a remade Fort Lincoln named for its predecessor on the west bank. This second-generation Fort Lincoln had done earlier service as a military base and Civilian Conservation Corps headquarters.

The camp was set off by 10-foot cyclone fences, topped with barbed wire and guarded by seven steel towers, each outfitted with a 30.06 rifle, field glasses, gas bombs, extra ammunition and a small pistol-grip spotlight, according to Frank E. Vyzralek, who has written a brief history of the camp for a coming exhibit.

Fifteen days later a second train arrived, carrying 715 foreign-born Japanese. They too found themselves behind the Fort Lincoln wire. Within two weeks of arrival, two of these internees were dead - a heart attack and suicide.

An almost equal number of Germans, many seamen stranded in U.S. ports, were locked up at Fort Lincoln.

An exhibit about the camp - "Snow Country Prison: Interned in North Dakota" - will open with public programs at the United Tribes Technical College Oct. 4-5. The exhibit will run through the end of November.

The college sits on the same site as the camp, and some of the buildings, identified from World War II-era photographs, are still in use.

The exhibit has been organized by UTTC and the North Dakota Museum of Art, with support from the Otto Bremer Foundation, the North Dakota Humanities Council and State Historical Society of North Dakota.

"There's a low level of awareness these days about what went on here during the war," says UTTC President David M. Gipp.

Much common knowledge about the camp in the local community focuses on the German inmates. That's likely because they often shared a common culture and language with local residents. And a number of the German internees stayed in the Bismarck-Mandan area after the war: Kurt Peters, who worked for the Tribune and Montana-Dakota Utilities, Paul Mueller, a barber, and Edward Drewello, an X-ray technician, are perhaps the best known.

And, too, although there were a large number of Japanese or Japanese Americans in the camp in 1942, by the next year almost all of the inmates were German. In its final days, in 1946, there were 715 Japanese and 719 Germans.

Because of that, much of the emphasis of the exhibits will focus on lesser known inmates: Those of Japanese ancestry, said Dennis Neumann from the UTTC office of public information.

The title for the exhibit - Snow Country Prison - comes from a Japanese haiku poem (three lines, 17 syllables) written by the father of Dr. Satsuki Ina, who was interned at Fort Lincoln. Ina, her brother and mother were in the camp at Tule Lake in California.

Ina, a retired professor from California State University and a licensed family therapist, produced a Public Broadcasting System film about children confined in the camps. Her film will be shown during the event, and she will be a panel member in the discussions.

Other major speakers for the event include author John Christgau, who wrote "Enemies: World War II Alien Internment," based on stories from Fort Lincoln; Karen Able, the daughter of an internee, who has lobbied for federal legislation studying the treatment of German aliens during the war; and Isao Fujimoto, a longtime professor at University of California Davis and founder of the school's Asian American studies program. Fujimoto's father was at a camp in Missoula, Mont.

The Fort Lincoln camp was very much like a self-contained city, including a 40-bed hospital and a 7,000-volume library.

Internees could join work parties that took jobs outside the camp, some traveling as far as Montana to erect bridges.

There were several attempted escapes.

The public programs for the exhibit, which will be on the UTTC campus, will contain observations and reminiscence about the camp. There will be many photographs from the camp, as well as stories of events there.

Activities begin with the screening of several relevant videos from 1 to 4 p.m. Oct. 4 in the Jack Barden Center, with an opening program and reception to follow at 6 p.m. That opening program will include remarks by Christgau and others.