Bringing Minidoka’s Stories to More People: A New Beyond the Barbed Wire Tour Is Coming
What if you could explore the stories of Minidoka National Historic Site year-round, even when the Visitor Center is closed or you are unable to make it to the site in person?
A new digital tour from Friends of Minidoka will make that possible.
Friends of Minidoka has received a $50,000 supplemental grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop a third tour in Beyond the Barbed Wire: Japanese American Stories of the Pacific Northwest, our growing series of digital tours that uses stories, oral histories, photographs, and other media to connect people with places and the Japanese American experience.
The new tour will focus on Minidoka National Historic Site and is expected to launch in spring 2027.
Exploring Minidoka beyond the Visitor Center
The Minidoka National Historic Site Visitor Center operates seasonally, which means that opportunities to explore the site with park staff are limited during part of the year. The new Beyond the Barbed Wire tour will offer another way to experience Minidoka through a self-guided, audio-visual experience that can be accessed year-round.
It will also provide an opportunity for people who cannot travel to Minidoka to engage with the site and its history from wherever they are.
Friends of Minidoka is developing the tour in close collaboration with staff at Minidoka National Historic Site. It will complement the seasonal ranger-led tour while exploring additional themes and stories connected to the site and the lived experiences of people incarcerated at Minidoka.
The digital format also creates opportunities to tell stories connected to places that visitors may not currently be able to enter. Several historic structures at Minidoka are closed while restoration work is underway. Through Beyond the Barbed Wire, visitors will be able to learn more about these places and the stories connected to them, even when the structures themselves are inaccessible.
Turning places into monuments through stories
Beyond the Barbed Wire was created to explore the full and complex history of the Japanese American experience through the places where that history unfolded.
The project identifies locations connected to Japanese American history, including places that may be little known, unmarked, or overlooked, and transforms them into “monuments” through the stories they tell.
The series began with support from a $1.152 million grant from the Mellon Foundation, which funded the development of the project’s infrastructure, website platform, and first two tours in the series. A mobile app is also in development.
Two tours are currently available:
Transcendent: The Life and Work of Artist Takuichi Fujii explores the life and work of Japanese American artist Takuichi Fujii through nine thematic monuments, combining his artwork with stories about his life and experiences. Explore Transcendent.
Resisters of the Pacific Northwest explores the stories of people who resisted the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II and the policies that made it possible. Explore Resisters.
The new Minidoka tour will add another dimension to the series by bringing this digital storytelling approach directly to one of the places where more than 13,000 Japanese Americans were unjustly incarcerated during World War II.
Connecting with Minidoka from anywhere
The new tour is being designed to serve both people who visit Minidoka in person and those who may never have the opportunity to travel to the site.
For visitors, it will offer another way to explore Minidoka and consider stories and themes that complement the ranger-led experience. For teachers, students, researchers, families, and others learning about Japanese American incarceration from elsewhere, it will provide an accessible way to connect with the site and the people whose lives were shaped by it.
At Friends of Minidoka, we believe preserving and sharing this history means finding new ways to reach people wherever they are.
The new Beyond the Barbed Wire tour will help us do just that.
The Minidoka tour is expected to launch in spring 2027. In the meantime, explore the existing Beyond the Barbed Wire tours at beyondbarbedwire.org.
About The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. Learn more about the Mellon Foundation’s Monument Initiative at mellon.org/article/the-monuments-project-initiative.
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