OUTREACH REPORT 02
Community Outreach Update
PWFC Archives Cluster in the Yukon
PWFC Archives Cluster co-chair Lisa Uyeda and archivist Tomoko Shida travelled to Whitehorse, YT on May 2, 2024 to take part in an Asian Heritage Month event titled “Bridging Generations: Japanese Canadian Workshops & Showcase.” The event was organized and co-hosted by two PWFC community partners: Japanese Canadian Association of Yukon (JCAY) and Hidden Histories Society Yukon (HHSY). It was supported through grants from the Japanese Canadian Legacies Society and the Yukon Government.
The Yukon has seen a marked rise in newcomer families from Japan in the past couple of decades, and according to JCAY president Yoko Oda, some of these newer immigrants have limited knowledge of what happened to Japanese Canadians during World War II. Thus, the topic of the first PWFC session was the history of Japanese in Canada and the Yukon. Lisa and Tomoko started with an overview of Japanese Canadian history, highlighting and using various outputs from the Landscapes of Injustice project including the Writing Wrongs digital exhibit, the Timeline of Injustice from the digital storytelling website, and the LOI research database. Long-time Whitehorse resident and Hidden Histories Society Yukon founding member Lillian Nakamura Maguire then highlighted the stories of Japanese individuals living in the Yukon, from the late 1800s to the present.
HHSY founding member Lillian Nakamura Maguire highlights the stories of individual Japanese people who lived in various parts of the Yukon. (Credit: Yoko Oda)
This year marks the 15th Anniversary of the founding of JCAY in 2009. Our local hosts Yoko and Lillian asked the PWFC Archives Cluster to prepare a session to support the community as they embark on an anniversary project to preserve the history of the Japanese community in the Yukon. Therefore, the second PWFC session led by Lisa and Tomoko was more of a how-to workshop on preserving local and ethnic community histories.
PWFC’s Lisa Uyeda and Tomoko Shida introduce themselves to the participants gathered at the Whitehorse Public Library meeting room on May 4, 2024. (Credit: Jun Kukina)
The first session had an attendance of about 32 participants from a diverse demographic. The second session drew a smaller, more intimate crowd of about 12 participants. In attendance were both longtime and newer members of JCAY, their friends and family; HHSY board members; and members of the broader public. We were fortunate to have professionals from various communities and heritage fields who contributed to a lively Q&A session following each session, including a faculty member with the Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning, a retired archives librarian of the Yukon Archives, a reporter from the Whitehorse Star, as well as former Commissioner of the Yukon and current President of the Board of Directors of the Association franco-yukonnaise, Angelique Bernard.
In addition to JCAY members, attendees of the morning session included a reporter from the Whitehorse Star, former commissioner of the Yukon, a faculty member from the Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning, and a retired archives library from the Yukon Archives. (Credit: Jun Kukina)
In addition to the two PWFC Archives Cluster sessions, the full-day event included a JCAY Cultural Showcase that took place at Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre and featured the launch of a film on the role of JCAY’s playcare group and language school in preserving Japanese culture and language. It also included performances by Yukon Taiko and JCAY children, as well as traditional activities such as mochi pounding, calligraphy, and origami.
The morning session concluded with a lively Q&A time. Pictured in the back row are four of the JCAY members who volunteered their time to make the event a success, including JCAY President Yoko Oda pictured on the far right. (Credit: Jun Kukina)
The afternoon session drew a smaller, more intimate crowd perfect for the more hands-on workshop on the how-to’s of preserving community histories. (Credit: Yoko Oda)
The event was covered in the media by the CBC and the Whitehorse Star. Listen to the recording of the CBC radio interview of local hosts Yoko and Lillian here. The Whitehorse Star news article can be found here.
Lisa and Tomoko are especially thankful to Yoko Oda, current president of JCAY and Lillian Nakamura Maguire of HHSY for inviting, organizing, and hosting the PWFC Archives Cluster’s first community outreach event. Both work tirelessly for their respective communities. In fact, shortly after this event on May 6, Lillian’s contributions to the community were recognized. She was one of six Yukoners awarded the inaugural King Charles III Coronation Medal that day, out of a total of 21 people in the Yukon who will or have received the medal this year. Congratulations, Lillian!
Media links:
https://www.whitehorsestar.com/News/celebrating-asian-heritage-month
OUTREACH REPORT 01
Chairs: Masumi Izumi, Theressa Takasaki, and Lisa Uyeda
Archival Spotlight collections of historical sources will bridge the records of Nikkei experiences in the participating countries, before, during, and after the 1940s. Translated transcripts in English, Portuguese, and Japanese, aim to ignite new transnational research.
The cluster will also support the preservation and use of archival materials. Digital and in-person sessions, will provide partners with training in collections management, enabling local preservation, and supporting access to existing digital resources.
Past Wrongs, Future Choices Archives Cluster Update
Past Wrongs, Future Choices (PWFC) is a partnership project based at the University of Victoria. Building on the work done by the Landscapes of Injustice (LOI) project which focused on the dispossession and displacement of Japanese Canadians, PWFC expands this lens to bring together the global history of the mistreatment of Nikkei during WWII.
Archives Cluster
One of the project’s four “clusters of activity” is the Archives Cluster. We have been tasked with two main outputs: an international Spotlight Series and Community Sessions across Canada. Meet the team behind the Archives Cluster!
L-R: Lisa U., Theressa T., Masumi I., Tomoko S.
Lisa Uyeda is co-chair of the Archives Cluster, and the Collections Manager at the Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre. She has continually contributed to the preservation and access of Japanese Canadian history and heritage, as well as served on numerous volunteer committees dedicated to Nikkei history, human rights, and young leadership.
Theressa Takasaki is co-chair of the Archives Cluster, and Heritage Manager; Archives, Collections and Programming at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre (JCCC), located in Toronto. Previously associated with the LOI project, she has curated multiple exhibits about Japanese Canadian culture and history.
Masumi Izumi is co-chair of the Archives Cluster, a Professor of North American Studies at the Department of Global and Regional Studies, Doshisha University, in Kyoto, Japan. She is a historian of Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians, and she has written extensively about their wartime removal and incarceration as well as about their post-internment community building efforts. Masumi examines the racial persecutions of diasporic Japanese population in Canada and the US, and highlights the reactions and activism in the Japanese North American communities against such injustice.
Tomoko Shida is an archivist for the Archives Cluster, and works remotely for the project in Ottawa. Prior to joining the PWFC team, she worked as a secondary school history teacher in Tokyo, and more recently, as an archivist at the University of Toronto Mississauga Library. Born in Japan, she spent her earlier years in Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec prior to moving to Ontario, so she is looking forward to revisiting some of her childhood haunts as she travels for the community sessions.
Spotlight Series Update
The plan for the international Spotlight Series is to draw together archival records from Australia, Brazil, Canada and the United States on various “spotlight” themes related to Nikkei during WWII. These primary sources will be translated and made available in English, Japanese and Portuguese.
Overseen by Cluster Co-Chairs Masumi and Theressa, progress on four Spotlights and additional supplementary primary sources has been underway with the help of Spotlight Fellows around the world.
The work of the Archives Cluster began in earnest in 2023 not with a Spotlight, but with the identification and digitization of Supplementary Primary Sources which will be made available through the PWFC website in the records’ original language. During the spring and summer of 2023, Andrew Hasegawa spent months digitizing the hearing records of the Japanese in Alien Tribunal Transcripts archived in the National Archive in Australia. Andrew is a Yonsei researcher, former PWFC Scholar-in-Residence, and Governance Board member representing Nikkei Australia. Eric Muller at the University of North Carolina has hired research assistants to help create plain-English summaries of the provisions of the Administrative Manual of the War Relocation Authority.
Based in the United States, Spotlight Fellow, former PWFC Scholar-in-Residence, and PhD candidate in history at UC Santa Cruz, Jonathan van Harmelen leads the Legal Enactment Spotlight. Jonathan has identified the important laws that were used to justify the wartime incarceration of Nikkei communities in Australia, Brazil, Canada and the United States, and collected these documents from various archives in each country.
The Camp Garden Spotlight is being led by Sansei visual artist Elysha Rei based in Australia, who is also a PhD candidate, former PWFC Artist-in-Residence, and Chair of Nikkei Australia. This Spotlight will gather visual and archival materials on gardens created in Japanese incarceration camps in Australia, Brazil, Canada, and the United States. Working with Elysha are the following Spotlight Fellows: US-based Sansei/Yonsei Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA, Koji Lau-Ozawa; Canada-based Sansei Leanne Sumiko Riding who specializes in research on the Yellowhead-Blue River Highway Labour Camp; and Brazil-based Yonsei visual artist, photographer and designer, Vinicius Nakashima.
The Education Spotlight is being led by cluster co-chair Theressa. This Spotlight will collect visual and archival materials related to schools and other educational facilities in the camps. Working with Theressa are Kei Nakatsu, a Yonsei undergraduate student in Human Geography and Art History at the University of Toronto; and Australia-based Andrew Hasegawa.
Work on a fourth Medical Spotlight began in January 2024, and is being led by Canada-based Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Victoria, Letitia Johnson. Her doctoral dissertation examined Japanese Canadian health, healthcare and healthcare providers during internment. Andrew Hasegawa will also be working with Letitia on this spotlight to source records from Australia.
PWFC JC Community Partners: Outreach workshop opportunities
A major goal for 2024 is to begin planning and running community outreach sessions to support our Japanese Canadian partner associations and societies and their members to learn about, preserve, and teach their own histories. We are actively seeking hosts and collaborators across Canada!
The aim of these community sessions is (1) to support Japanese Canadian individuals and families to access records and information shared on the Landscapes of Injustice (LOI) research database, and (2) to provide training in collections management and support the preservation of Japanese Canadian and Japanese diaspora materials.
The Archives Cluster has professionally trained archivists who are available to travel to your community or host an online session. Some ideas about what we can offer include (but are not limited to!):
- Workshop on how to navigate the LOI database, and how to understand the archival records found in it
- Workshop on preserving and digitizing family or group records
- Workshop on how to use and access archival records related to Japanese Canadians held at archives in Canada
- Booth at your event to field questions related to the LOI database, PWFC project, researching Japanese Canadian or family history, etc.
- Consultation meetings for Japanese Canadian groups looking into preserving the group’s history and records
- Other requests are welcome!
If you are a Japanese Canadian organization or group not already affiliated with PWFC and would like to partner with us for an event, workshop or project in 2024 and beyond, please reach out to us at tshida@nikkeiplace.org.
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