I thought perhaps this is a pretty Easter-like delicacy to serve around Easter. So colourful!

I truly appreciated the beauty, history, and honour of going to some of the Buddhist and Shinto shrines in Kyoto. Visiting the Daisen-In Temple, Kiyomizu Temple and Ise Temple were very memorable. While in Kyoto we were able to see the library about Japanese culture at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies. We even managed to see some of the first cherry blossoms at the Imperial Palace grounds in Kyoto.

I have always envied native speakers of English, French, Spanish, German, Italian and other major Indo-European languages, because common roots make it so much easier for them to learn each other’s languages than for people from totally different linguistic backgrounds like Japanese and Chinese trying to learn English, today’s language of global business, and other influential European languages. It is of course just as hard for, say, native English or French speakers, to tackle Japanese or Chinese.
In our Ijusha/Nikkeijin context, of course, the English/Japanese language divide has always been and …

I had met John Asfour shortly after redress in Montreal as we participated on a panel discussion at McGill University that included Dr. Desmond Morton, a McGill historian, a representative from the Canadian Jewish Congress. John Asfour, as president of the Canadian Arab Federation and myself, from the National Association of Japanese Canadians.

For many fishermen, the lifting of restrictions against Japanese Canadians on April 1, 1949 was bittersweet. While they were now allowed to move anywhere in Canada, including back to the BC coast, it wasn’t that simple. Eight years had passed since they were ordered off the coast. All fishing boats had been confiscated and then sold or sunk. Some fishermen had taken up other careers in the east. Some were too old to return to fishing. And some were just too bitter at the way they had been treated by their own government to want to return.

The Nikkei Fishermen’s Reunion Committee was formed at the turn of the new millennium by three sons of fishermen who had recently lost their fathers to Alzheimer’s and death. Realizing that the way of life that their fathers and grandfathers had experienced was fast disappearing, they resolved that the sacrifices and hardships that they had endured must be acknowledged and commemorated.

I was deeply disappointed not to see any Japanese Canadian story in the Vancouver Sun’s An Immigrant’s Journey: 150 Years of Newcomers to BC last year. As expected, Chinese and Indians had their stories featured, and even someone from The Philippines, whose people have come to Canada only since 1965, had his story included. Yet there wasn’t any from the Canadian Nikkei community who have been in Canada since the turn of the century.
It could be that Japanese Canadians don’t want to talk about their families. This could be a …

Dear Mr. Greenaway,
I very much enjoyed the April issue of The Bulletin in which Roy Ito was remembered. Soldier, writer, teacher, and family man, he continues to be admired for many different reasons. For me, appreciation of Roy stems from a lesser known incident in his life that I discovered while researching a book on the Asahi baseball team.
Some of The Bulletin’s older readers will remember that in the days after Pearl Harbour Vancouver was gripped by a hysteria that was unabating. Every person of Japanese origin was under suspicion …

My family, the Murakamis of Salt Spring Island, was exiled in 1942 when I was seven years old. I have told our story to hundreds of high school students and others; each time it becomes less painful. Please honour our gathering by sharing your internment experience.