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Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre – Twenty Years of Memories

by Tsuneko Kokubo (with ‘ghost writer’ Paul Gibbons) At just about the time that the Kyowakai Society of New Denver was being created, I was a small child visiting my grandmother in Japan. When the internment happened, I was stranded…

The other day I started thinking about that deep feeling in Japanese folk and pop songs. Not that I’m an expert, because I don’t know a lot of Japanese songs, I don’t search for them, and I really didn’t learn any when growing up. Now, for the record, I do know some of the lyrics and melody of that old chestnut, Sukiyaki.

Kobayashi’s path to becoming the father of Canada’s iconic tabletop hockey game was anything but direct. He first found work as a punch press operator, stamping parts for jewelry. To improve on his Grade 8 education, he enrolled at Sir George Williams College — now Concordia University — where he took chemistry, physics and math.

We at The Bulletin have been receiving some “one-liners” from readers responding to our informal survey : Please follow “You Are Japanese Canadian (JC) If…” (see January issue). It can be a light-hearted, humorous or even a touching way of looking at…

It is an Italianate-style building, which was a significant structure when it was built, and was one of the first brick-clad buildings in the Powell Street area. It was home to the Uchida family whose daughter, Chitose was the first Japanese Canadian woman to attend UBC, and whose niece, Dr. Irene Uchida, became a world-renowned geneticist and was awarded the Order of Canada. It also housed a Japanese Hospital.

Identifying as Japanese Canadian is no longer the stigma it once was. Heck, some might even say we’re finally cool. After all, our roots go all the way back to the land of Hello Kitty, anime and sushi. What makes YOU Japanese Canadian? The Bulletin is compiling a list of the unique charactaristics that make us who we are.

Alan called me up to express his admiration for New Denver and to ask me to join a group of like-minded Sansei in a “rap” session to discuss issues common to Japanese Canadians – identity, racism and the internment. I did and my world opened up.

June 23, 2014 officially marks the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre (NIMC). Spearheaded in the early 1990s by the late Mrs. Chie Kamegaya, a former teacher, Kaslo internee and respected community elder, this important community project involved the collective efforts ...

Born in a time of prosperity, I never saw my father cry but my brother did, just once. Thus that sense of betrayal, of confusion and of the absolute lack of self-esteem was planted in the ten-year-old’s mind until the day he died some 69 years later. That is the true meaning of redress: a gesture of compensation for a lifetime of hurt and shame.

When I compare the social status of a career in art today, being an artist (female or male) is considered a much more respectable profession than when I first started out as a visual artist. However, I’m not sure if you are questioning if the status of a female artist in relationship to a male artist has changed. If this is what you are asking, comparing artistic status is a difficult thing to measure ....