Lorene Oikawa

Lorene Oikawa is the Past President of the National Association of Japanese Canadians, and a yonsei, fourth generation Canadian Japanese, whose family came from Japan to Canada in the 1800s. With a passion for human rights and her Japanese heritage, her activism includes co-editing a book, Honouring Our People: Breaking the Silence, which shares stories of Japanese Canadian survivors of uprooting, dispossession, internment/incarceration, and exile. Her current projects include working with the Japanese Canadian community to create the Japanese Canadian Hastings Park Interpretive Centre in Vancouver and developing a JC legacy initiative in the City of Surrey. She was the Vice-chair of the Phase 2 Steering Committee of the Landscapes of Injustice. Lorene’s deep connection to the history of Japanese Canadians makes the work with PWFC very personal for her, not just to remember the past, but to learn from it, now and in the future, so the injustice is not repeated.