{"id":14075,"date":"2022-09-29T14:49:22","date_gmt":"2022-09-29T18:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/najc.ca\/?p=14075"},"modified":"2022-09-29T14:50:32","modified_gmt":"2022-09-29T18:50:32","slug":"najc-presidents-message-august-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/najc.ca\/najc-presidents-message-august-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"NAJC President\u2019s Message \u2013 August 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"
by Lorene Oikawa<\/strong><\/p>\n Festivals and in-person gatherings have filled our calendars. With each event, it has been a wonderful opportunity to provide information and share stories about Japanese Canadians. At the Surrey Fusion Festival, I organized the Japan \/ Japanese Canadian Pavilion and included stories of Japanese Canadians in Surrey. I kept hearing people say that they never knew about the history of Japanese Canadians in Surrey. Neither did I when I was growing up in Surrey. Our heritage is invisible because of the forced uprooting of Japanese Canadians and the omission of our history in our communities.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n One area in Surrey called Strawberry Hill got the name because of the large number of Japanese Canadian strawberry farmers who not only cleared and farmed the land they created the Surrey Berry Growers\u2019 Co-operative Association and the Strawberry Hill Japanese Farmers\u2019 Association. They helped pay for the Strawberry Hill Community Hall and developed a major road. This information was provided in one of the panels I had at the Pavilion and was previously in an exhibit at the Museum of Surrey.<\/p>\n I worked with the curator at the Museum of Surrey to obtain stories and a special side exhibit was developed and launched and shown along with the Broken Promises exhibit that was at the museum and is now at the Royal BC Museum in Victoria. Part of the special Surrey exhibit was a reproduction of a letter and photo and copies of some letters from the Joan Gillis fonds acquired by UBC in 2018.<\/p>\n The fonds contains 149 letters and 10 photographs sent to Joan Gillis by a group of Japanese Canadian friends who were also students at Queen Elizabeth Secondary School in Surrey before they and their families were forcibly uprooted in 1942. Most of the correspondence was from 1942 to 1946 when the Japanese Canadian former students were interned\/incarcerated in camps in British Columbia, and in farms in Manitoba and Alberta. The letters provide some insights into how the young Japanese Canadians lived while interned\/incarcerated, but the letter writers also knew that government censors were reviewing all correspondence. Selections from the Joan Gillis fonds can be viewed online in a digital exhibit, I Know We\u2019ll Meet Again https:\/\/bit.ly\/3Q61JkQ<\/a><\/p>\n Last month, in recognition of the historical value of the Joan Gillis fonds, the fonds were added to the Canadian Commission for UNESCO\u2019s Canada Memory of the World Register. This is a major initiative to preserve and protect valuable documentary works of historical significance which reflect the diversity of Canada. The UNESCO announcement may be read at this link https:\/\/bit.ly\/3blmb2p<\/a><\/p>\n At Powell Street Festival and Surrey Fusion Festival, there were people who did not know about Hastings Park being used to hold about 8,000 Japanese Canadians before being shipped out to internment\/incarceration camps. Many were Japanese Canadians who said their family did not talk about it.<\/p>\n 80 years ago, the first arrivals of Japanese Canadians from outside of Vancouver arrived at Hastings Park on March 16, 1942. On September 1, 1942, the population at Hastings Park was 3,866. By September 30, 1942, Hastings Park Assembly Centre is officially closed. The Hastings Park hospital remains open with 105 people who remain there until March 1943 when the hospital is closed, and the patients and staff are sent to a new Sanatorium in New Denver.<\/p>\n There are four signs at Hastings Park that tell part of the stories in the words of the survivors. Some of the Japanese Canadian community members who worked on the signage including Dan Tokawa and myself have taken on roles in the new Japanese Canadian Hastings Park Interpretive Centre Society. We are working on the next phase of the project which is an interpretive centre at Hastings Park.<\/p>\n We would like feedback from the Japanese Canadian community. Please consider answering the survey at bit.ly\/Hastings-Park Email JCHPICS2022@gmail.com<\/a> if you have any questions or want to be added to a mailing list for updates.<\/p>\n The NAJC received an invitation from our friend Setsuko Thurlow, an international disarmament advocate and a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) to attend the zoom webinar 2022 Hiroshima \u2013 Nagasaki Day Commemoration on August 9th<\/sup> from 7-8:30 p.m. Eastern time. More info at www.hiroshimadaycoalition.ca<\/a> & register at tinyurl.com\/CanadaSignTheBan The NAJC accepts Setsuko\u2019s call to continue supporting the commitment for public awareness of the danger of nuclear weapons and advocating for their total abolition, for peace.<\/p>\n