By Lorene Oikawa, NAJC Past President
NAJC’s Japan tour is finalized for May. Registration is closed, but good news: there will be another trip in October.
Regional meetings for member organizations are being planned. Receive updates through your local member organization. List of member organizations are on the NAJC website.
We are also starting to prepare for the festivals that are upcoming. If you have information about Japanese Canadian events and festivals, please let us know and we can help promote them. Email [email protected].
Geoff Meggs has a long history as a politician with three terms as a member of Vancouver City Council, senior communication roles, as executive director of the BC Federation of Labour, and as chief of staff to Premier John Horgan until Premier Horgan retired in 2022.
He was a key figure with the government when the NAJC led the BC Redress campaign. We tried to educate the government on the history of our Japanese Canadian community, reminding them that our ancestors first arrived in the 1800s and worked hard and contributed to communities in the following years. Everything was taken away with the forced uprooting in 1942, dispossession, incarceration until 1949, and exile. Racist BC politicians were the most virulent in the push to force Japanese Canadians out of BC. The government ignored the RCMP and Canadian military who told them that there wasn’t any evidence of wrongdoing.
Geoff understood. He knew from his background with the fishing union and labour movement. He knows the history of my uncle Buck (Tatsuro) Suzuki, a Japanese Canadian fisher and labour and environmental activist. Geoff is an author and has researched the history of the Japanese Canadian community especially the fishers. He has written books about the history of fishing including Strange New Country: The Fraser River Salmon Strikes of 1900-1901 which includes the stories of the Japanese Canadian fishers who were working hard to secure equity and a place among the other fishers.
Last year, he finished a story of Tomekichi Homma, a Japanese Canadian who took legal action in 1900 to challenge B.C.’s racist voting laws. Geoff has been working on this project since 2022 and has given permission for the NAJC to share this important story about a Japanese Canadian’s fight for voting rights. Given the current political climate, it’s a timely reminder that we must make an informed choice when we vote, and we must vote to ensure our democracy.
With kind permission, you can read the full story on our website here.
