I would like to thank Mr. Hayashi for his remarkable views and experience in relation to the residential school experience (November 2013 Bulletin). I find his words to be very validating and in fact freeing from the oppressive experiences and history of the legacy of residential schools. A very accurate depiction of events as they have unfolded and a very clear representation of an actual reconciliation of these accounts. The Japanese community in particular is fortunate to have him among your ranks and Canada in her entirety has plenty to learn from Mr. Hayashi’s personal approach to reconciling with the aboriginal community. His account is a first among many attempts to recount such historical events that simply validates and does not take away from the experience of racist persecution, oppression and assimilation policies of the Canadian government. He is successful in claiming his own biases, emotions and thoughts without blaming and perhaps more importantly without offering pity. Simply, he sees, hears and feels…owning his own experience of these events and he expresses himself clearly. An experience I find to be both validating and freeing at the same time. To you Mr. Hayashi and to the Japanese community of Canada, I say thank you! from the bottom of my heart. tleco! tleco!
Daniel Blackstone
Your November issue is another must-keep issue of The Bulletin. The They Went to War section was ideal and your photo choices were also great.
Thanks a lot from this regular reader—and I’m sure I’d say this even if I weren’t a veteran.
By the way, the snapshot of six nisei soldiers at the bottom left of your cover includes my late brother-in-law Nobby Koyama. He is the one standing at the far right.
As it happens, the six guys were in the group I belonged to and we had been rushed to Asia in summer 1945 because the British were in desperate need of Japanese-language interpreter-translators. I had left the group which was at a secret-service camp north of Calcutta, India, and sent to Bombay assigned to another operation. And when my sister Eileen Koyama, Nobby’s widow, asked me about the pic which both of us had seen for the first time on your cover, I told her it must have been taken in that secret camp area sometime during the fall of 1945.
Back in Canada, Nobby joined a town-planning company (Project Planning Associates) and participated in the planning of the first planned community in Toronto called Don Mills. He subsequently was sent here and there in the Middle East Asia and elsewhere on town-planning projects.
I look forward each month to The Bulletin, you are doing such a great job, John. Congratulations.
Frank Moritsugu