Grandfather’s Prince Rupert sakura legacy to live on in music by John Endo Greenaway In 1909, Shotaro (Tom) Shimizu arrived in Prince Rupert, in northern British Columbia, having worked for two years on the railways in the United States after leaving his home in Nara, Japan. As the second son in his family, he felt...Continue reading
I was very curious how others would respond. I applied for the National Association of Japanese Canadians’ (NAJC) Young Leaders Fund to help support the idea, and while I was waiting to hear back about the grant, I began mentioning the idea to folks.Continue reading
The NAJC has been keen to promote and preserve the legacy of the community, including the arts. Our goal is to enshrine the legacy of Japanese Canadian artists whose creative works were made prior to the internet era, and have been lost to time. Continue reading
On December 1, 2012, a commemorative plaque was unveiled at Hastings Park in Vancouver. To read a full article on this event, click HERE.
In 1945, before the end of World War II, the Canadian government offered to “repatriate“ any ethnic Japanese to Japan after the war ended, even Canadian-born British subjects. Although signing up for the move was voluntary, many felt pressured to agree. In 1946, fully a year after the end of the war, some 4,000 Japanese...
I like being with people. And I feel at home here. It’s given me an opportunity to do some writing, which I didn’t feel very secure about. It’s given me a lot more confidence in myself and I feel like I’ve got a lot of things to offer the community, like being involved in conferences and so on.Continue reading
My parents, Gordon and Esther Hirabayashi, were remarkable folks. My mother’s father, Floyd Schmoe, was a charismatic individual, a renaissance man who was a lifetime pacifist, author, sculptor, mountain guide and park naturalist on Mt. Rainier, marine biologist, and forest ecologist. He built houses for refugees in France for 14 months during World War I....Continue reading
I was brought up in Kitsilano so as youngsters all our friends were English-speaking, apart from a few other Japanese Canadian families. I went to Lord Tennyson Elementary and then Kitsilano Junior and High Schools.Continue reading
We are asking community members and descendants to forward the full names of family members who were detained in Hastings ParkContinue reading