WEEK 2 

october 8 - 14

sunday - october 8

Broken Promises : Curator Tour of the exhibit

Courtesy of Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre

Grounded in research from Landscapes of Injustice – a 7 year multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional, community engaged project, this exhibit explores the dispossession of Japanese Canadians in the 1940s. community. The story unfolds by following seven narrators. Learn about life for Japanese Canadians in Canada before war, the administration of their lives during and after war ends, and how legacies of dispossession continue to this day. Launched in 2020, the exhibit continues to travel in Canada to 2025.

How Colonialism Set the Stage for Maui's Destruction by Fire

Courtesy of Democracy Now!

The death toll from the Maui wildfires is now about 100 and is expected to continue to climb in what is now the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century and the worst natural disaster in Hawaii's history. As recovery efforts continue, many residents are asking why Hawaii's early warning system, with about 80 alarms on the island of Maui alone, did not get activated to alert residents about the approaching flames. We speak with Kaleikoa Kaeo, professor of Hawaiian studies at the University of Hawaii Maui College, who gives a history of colonialism in Maui and how the transformation of the island for mass tourism, such as changes to agriculture and water management practices, helped to turn the area into a tinderbox. "Our people who have lived there since time immemorial are suffering because of the consequences that have been imposed really from outside foreign forces," says Kaeo.

monday - october 9

The Art of Collaboration: Literature and Illustration

Nikkei Rising member, Rene Kumiko Nichols, will discuss with Author, Ken Mochizuki, and Illustrator, Kiku Hughes, their collaborative graphic novel, Those Who Helped Us: Assisting Japanese Americans During the War, published in November 2022. Basketball-loving Sumiko Tanaka, then 11, narrates this graphic novel about the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans. Through her eyes, we watch as her family is forced from their home and subjected to indiscriminate racism as they are shipped off to the concentration camp called Minidoka in Idaho.

Okaeri - intro

Courtesy of Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre

Okaeri おかえり ‘welcome back home' is an oral history project featuring 21 interviews with Japanese Canadians who lived through the Second World War. It shares individual experiences of the nisei or second-generation Japanese Canadians who lived through internment in Canada, and the kika-nisei, who were also nisei but were uprooted to Japan and later returned to Canada in the 1950s. All life stories share the challenges of survival and what returning home meant to them.

tuesday - october 10

wednesday - october 11

Amache National Historic Site Updates

On March 18, 2022, the Amache National Historic Site Act was signed into law, authorizing Amache National Historic Site to be established. Since then, the Amache Preservation Society and Town of Granada have been working with the National Park Service on details for the land transfer. NPS is also working with partners to develop planning documents, including the Foundation Document which will guide management of Amache into the future. Join core members of the team to learn more about Amache's journey to become part of the National Park System, current operating status, and future directions.

thursday - october 12

friday - october 13

Of Japanese Descent: An Interim Report (1945)

Courtesy of the Library and Archives of Canada

A public relations film which implies that the relocation and interment of Japanese Canadians was benign and necessary. Views of a Vancouver slum, idle fishing fleet, and houses on outskirts. Sequences on rehabilitated ghost towns in the Slocan Valley including Nakusp. Sequences on the new town of Tashme being built. Sequences on Japanese making a living cutting firewood, operating lumber mills, farming. Interior of tuberculosis sanatorium and patients. Sequences on Japanese folk festival and dancing. Focus on life in Tashme with shots of happy people, hospital, school, general store, bakery, and a troop of boy scouts.

25 for 25: celebrating 25 years of the japanese American Museum of oregon

Courtesy of the Japanese American Museum of Oregon

This year, the Japanese American Museum of Oregon celebrates 25 years of preserving, honoring, and sharing the history and culture of Japanese Americans in the Northwest. 25 for 25, a new digital exhibition, honors this milestone by highlighting objects from JAMO’s collection that particularly highlight our history, the Japanese American story in Oregon, and the people who have worked tirelessly to make this museum into an institution our community takes pride in. This session will take you on a short tour of the exhibition and some of the stories behind the collection.

saturday - october 14

80 Years Later Virtual Q&A

Filmmaker Celine Parreñas Shimizu will join her husband Dan Shimizu and members of his extended family featured in documentary film 80 Years Later for a virtual Q&A, moderated by Tadaima film festival curator Rob Buscher.

Feature documentary 80 Years Later explores the racial inheritance of Japanese American family incarceration during World War II. The film follows two cousins, Kiyo and Robert, respectively a teenager and child living in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1942 when Executive Order 9066 was signed. Eighty years later, the cousins continue to grapple with the meaning of their incarceration and its impact on their lives, ancestors, and descendants.

Celine Parreñas Shimizu is a filmmaker and film scholar. She is well known for her work on race, sexuality and representations. She is currently Dean of the Arts Division at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Exploring Portland’s Lost Japantown via a Digital Story Map

Courtesy of the Japanese American Museum of Oregon

This session will introduce a new digital tool called A Forgotten Community: A Tour of Portland’s Lost Japanese American Community. This interactive resource engages the user in developing a more complex understanding of over a century of Oregon’s history, focusing on Portland’s Japantown. In this session, participants will learn how to use the Story Map and hear from some of the creators about a few sites it highlights.

Hue Soundbytes with Tracy Koga: Japanese Canadian Historical Retrospective - Terumi Kuwada

Courtesy of iLike Hue

Terumi Kuwada talks to Hue's Tracy Koga about her parents' journey. She also touches on the political undertaking of the Redress to Japanese Canadians, and the subsequent apology by the Conservative Government led by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.

Hue Soundbytes with Tracy Koga: Japanese Canadian Historical Retrospective - Midori Bruns

Courtesy of iLike Hue

Midori Bruns talks to Hue’s Tracy Koga and remembers growing up in BC, the ugliness of the internment and hard work on the farms. Plus, the story of how they eventually ended up coming to Winnipeg.