By Lorene Oikawa, Past President
The forced uprooting, dispossession, incarceration, and exile of Japanese Canadians from 1942 to 1949, erased Japanese Canadians from west coast communities. Many Canadians don’t know the stories of our ancestors who first arrived in Canada in the 1800s.They don’t know about the thriving communities and the contributions of Japanese Canadians.
For example, before 1942, there were about 4 Japanese Canadian newspapers operating in Vancouver. Three were three Japanese language newspapers, the Tairiku, the Canada Shimpo, and the Daily People.
The Shimpo was established in 1906 by Reverend Kaburagi and was one of the first Japanese-language papers focused on raising political awareness.
The Tairiku Nippō (Continental Daily News) was founded on June 22, 1907 and was the major daily paper for the Japanese Canadian community. Founder Dosa Iida ran into some financial difficulties and sold the business to Yasushi Yamazaki on February 8, 1908. The newspaper included news about community events and published ads for businesses in the Powell Street area in Vancouver. Yamazaki was active in the community, as the Secretary of the Japanese Fishermen’s Union in Steveston 1900. He organized the Canadian Japanese Volunteer Corp at the start of the First World War, but Japanese Canadians were rejected. In 1927, Tairiku’s headquarters was at 213-215 East Cordova Street. It published until 1941 when it and other Japanese language papers were shut down by the government.
The Nisei (second generation Japanese Canadians) felt their views weren’t represented by the Japanese language newspapers. They wanted to protest the discrimination against Japanese Canadians and show they were worthy of franchise. There were two attempts at English language newspapers. Hozumi Yonemura started The New Age, a six-page monthly which only lasted a year. Peter Masuda edited The Japanese Canadian which only had a short run. These two newspapers paved the way for The New Canadian newspaper which was launched in November 1938.
The first editor of The New Canadian was Shinobu Higashi. The New Canadian was a Nisei newspaper and it included articles in English. It reported on community news, events, and activities, shared opinions in its editorials, and it was the first time that the views of Japanese Canadians were easily accessible to the rest of Canada.
Unfortunately, the false narratives about Japanese Canadians continued to be published in the established newspapers of the time. Racist politicians were freely
quoted, and all statements were taken as facts despite the lack of evidence. After Pearl Harbour, false stories of sabotage were repeated and used against Japanese Canadians.
Thomas Shoyama was editor of The New Canadian newspaper from 1939 to 1945, and a spokesperson for the Japanese Canadian Citizens’ League, an organization which had been fighting discrimination against Japanese Canadians since 1936.
In the present, we know about his illustrious career. After the war, he joined the Tommy Douglas CCF (Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, precursor to the New Democratic Party) government in Saskatchewan as an economic advisor and would help implement the start of what we know as our iconic public health care.
In 1941, Shoyama was an intelligent, articulate editor. He had graduated from UBC with honours. However, his degree in commerce and economics wasn’t enough to get him into the professional world where his ethnicity was used to block him from most opportunities and like the rest of the community, he was denied the right to vote.
At the time, Shoyama had analyzed the political situation and past practise. He believed that the government would require regular reporting by Japanese Canadians and feared that violence would be incited against Japanese Canadians.
Once the forced uprooting from the coast began in earnest, the government decided that it would be prudent to allow the paper to continue publishing, with heavy oversight and censorship. As Frank Moritsugu reminisced in a 1958 edition of The New Canadian, “The week’s issue could not be ‘put to bed’ on the press until the wire arrived from the censor (usually late Thursday) giving approval or suggesting certain deletions.
Realizing that it needed a way to communicate with the Japanese-speaking Issei, the decision was made to turn The New Canadian into a bilingual publication. Takaichi Umezuki was recruited as Japanese editor.
When The New Canadian began publishing on Kaslo’s Front Street on November 30, 1942, it became the primary source of news for a community that had been exiled from their homes on the west coast. The only Japanese Canadian newspaper allowed to publish during the war, it carried news of friends and family members in the various camps, along with official proclamations and government policy directives.
“We had a sense of mission in the sense that it was very important to do everything we could to sustain morale. We had to tell people: Look, in spite of all these terrible things that have happened to you, stand on your own feet. Look within yourself to your own strength and self-respect and your own sense of dignity.”
Tommy Shoyama from the Langham tape collection
In 1945, The New Canadian moved to Winnipeg, in line with its own editorial policy advocating eastern relocation for Japanese Canadians. Kasey Oyama took over as editor when Tom Shoyama volunteered for the Canadian Army.
In 1949, the paper relocated for the final time, to Toronto, where Toyo Takata took over as editor. The New Canadian, under various editors, continued publishing until 2001, when it closed down due to a combination of declining readership and decreasing advertising sales. The last issue was published in September of that year, nearly 63 years after it first appeared.
The Bulletin magazine celebrates 68 years in 2026. It started in April 1958 when a young Nisei, Miyoshi “Mickey” Nakashima started a newsletter. She named it, The Bulletin, and saw it as a way to communicate with the members of the [Greater Vancouver] Japanese Canadian Citizens’ Association who weren’t showing up at meetings. The March 1959 editorial, referred to the “common bond of a racial and cultural ancestry” between members despite “interest and lives [that] diverge in a thousand ways” and that it would sustain the Japanese Canadian community and hopefully the JCCA.
Mickey Nakashima’s career did not start as an editor. In 1950 she came from Montréal (where she graduated from McGIll University in 1949) to the new University of British Columbia medical school where her employer became the head of the Anatomy Department. Mickey was known across Canada for her scientific research especially for her work on hypertension. In addition to her research, she was actively involved with the Japanese Canadian community including chapters of the Japanese Canadian Citizens Association.
Japanese Canadians were allowed to freely move as of 1949, but the discrimination did not end. Many Nisei wanted to move forward and forget (or at least not give visibility to) their heritage that made them targets for the government. Sansei (third generation Japanese Canadians) and some Nisei would relate to the politics of the 1960s and the civil rights movement. For example, Tamio Wakayama, a young Nisei, went to the southern US and participated in the American civil rights movement and documented it through his photography.
In 1960, Mickey Nakashima stepped down to marry Min Tanaka. Gordon Kadota who was a feature writer, took over as editor.
Gordon Kadota, long serving community leader, shared his memories at the 50th anniversary of The Bulletin. He recalled being a young person who helped publish the magazine in Mickey’s basement suite in Vancouver. When he took over as editor, he had to find a new location. Dr. George Ishiwara who was president of the BC JCCA, offered a room at the back of his dental practise. In the early 1960s, Gordon decided it was important to print the magazine in both English and Japanese. He said there wasn’t
a Japanese typewriter so Michiko Kadota hand wrote the Japanese section, and later became the editor for the Japanese section. He also solicited advertising so that The Bulletin would be financially independent “and have an editorial that could reflect and comment on the issues of the times without censorship.” Gordon also listed many names thanking them for their work “taking The Bulletin to the next level.”
The Bulletin saw many editors through the years and in November 1984 following a format change in October, Tamio Wakayama became the Managing Editor, Sumio Koike became the Japanese Editor, and Fumio Greenaway became the Office Manager.
Fumiko Greenaway would later become editor and then her son John Endo Greenaway followed in her footsteps in 1993.
Last month, long-time editor John Endo Greenaway announced he was stepping down. The Bulletin is our monthly journal about the Japanese Canadian community, history, and culture. The stories reach across the country, but because of it’s base in Vancouver keeps a watchful eye on the foundatonal home of Japanese Canadians.
Please consider supporting The Bulletin and if you know someone with a connection to our community and strong editorial and publishing skills, please have them apply to the GVJCCA. https://jccabulletin-geppo.ca/job-posting-desktop-publisher
It would be a huge regret and loss to our community to end its run at 68 years.
Another important publication is Nikkei Voice. The newspaper was launched in December 1987 with regular issues published from 1988. It was founded to support the National Association of Japanese Canadians (NAJC) and to serve as a voice for the Japanese Canadian community following the historic 1988 Redress settlement.
Ken Kishibe was the first editor and a key figure in the founding and naming of the paper. Other key figures included Tom Shoyama who was a past editor of The New Canadian newspaper and author Joy Kogawa. Dr. Wes Fujiwara was the first publisher and oversaw the transformation of the NAJC newsletter into the newspaper, and financed the conversion to computers. Joy Kogawa (Obasan), Frank Moritsugu, and Ken Adachi (The Enemy That Never Was) were the first editorial advisors for the newspaper.
Frank Moritsugu was a Nikkei Voice columnist until his death at the age of 102 years old in 2025. He was one of the first Japanese Canadian journalists to write for mainstream media, such as Maclean’s, Canadian Home & Gardens, CBC, the Toronto Star, and the Montreal Star. He started as a teenager working for The New Canadian newspaper. In a 2022 interview with the Nikkei Voice, Moritsugu said, “Back in B.C., when we were growing up, you never saw a Japanese name in the bylines of any newspapers.”
Nikkei Voice has been home to many talented Japanese Canadians. Jesse Nishihata who was a pioneer in Japanese Canadian filmmaking, worked for CBC and contributed to the National Film Board of Canada, and was an editor and author, played a pivotal role as an editor in the early 1990s.
Nikkei Voice is based in Toronto and publishes 10 issues per year. Nikkei Voice continues to serve the Japanese Canadian community “by providing timely news, cultural insights, and featuring significant contributions from prominent individuals and emerging voices alike.” nikkeivoice.ca
We must support The Bulletin and Nikkei Voice. These are Japanese Canadian publications providing space for our voices. Japanese Canadians should be telling our stories. We know from the past when our voices are silenced and we are made to disappear, and others create narratives that perpetuate stereotypes and misinformation. We owe it to our ancestors, our community now, and for our future.
