Revisiting Japanese Canadian Redress: Conference on the 30th Anniversary of the Agreement

Type:

Conference

Language:

In English with simultaneous French translation

Date:

September 20, 2018

Time:

7 to 9 pm (doors open at 6:30 pm)

Details:

The Ottawa Japanese Community Association (OJCA), in collaboration with Library and Archives Canada (LAC), invites you to a conference to mark the 30th anniversary of the Japanese Canadian Redress Agreement, a historic landmark in the evolution of human rights in Canada.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Redress Agreement between the National Association of Japanese Canadians (NAJC) and the Government of Canada. The agreement included a formal acknowledgement and symbolic individual redress payments for the extensive and systemic human rights violations suffered by the Japanese Canadian community during the Second World War. The federal government was responsible for the wholesale internment of the community, the seizure and liquidation of Japanese Canadian property, as well as postwar deportations. The 1988 Redress Agreement held the Government of Canada accountable for these injustices and opened the door to reconciliation and redress for other communities. Read more about the Japanese Canadian journey.

The Conference on the 30th Anniversary of the Agreement aims to ensure that the wartime experiences of the Japanese Canadians and the journey to Redress are not forgotten. It will also explore how LAC played a pivotal role in making archival records accessible to the community, records that were used to provide evidence of the Government of Canada’s wrongdoing during the fight for Redress. The event will also look to the future in the hopes of building new coalitions for change and supporting the evolution of human rights in Canada.

For more information, consult the Biographies of speakers below, or email bac.invitation.lac@canada.ca.

Location:

Library and Archives Canada
Alfred Pellan Room, 2nd Floor

Address:

395 Wellington Street

City:

Ottawa, Ontario

Required:

Register

Biographies of speakers

• Sachiko Okuda, President of the OJCA; Co-Master of Ceremonies

  Sachiko Okuda is a third-generation Japanese Canadian whose parents, Hiroshi Okuda and Shima Umemoto, were interned in Tashme and in Bay Farm, respectively. Sachiko became actively involved in the Ottawa Japanese community in the spring of 1988 with the Rally for Japanese Canadian Redress on Parliament Hill. She was President of the Ottawa Japanese Community Association in the years following redress, and returned to the position in 2014. For more than 15 years she has contributed to “Contact Japan,” the local Japanese community television program. She is also a literacy and numeracy volunteer for teenage and adult newcomers to Canada.

• Dr. Henry Shibata, Surgical oncologist (retired) and founding President, Canadian Society of Surgical Oncology; Co-Master of Ceremonies

  Dr. Henry Ryusuke Shibata, MD, MSc, FACS, FRCSC, was born in Vancouver in 1930. He and his family were interned in Lemon Creek, and at the end of WWII were deported to Hiroshima where they and other Canadian “returnees” endured terrible post-war hardship. In 1955, Henry graduated from Hiroshima University School of Medicine and then studied the after-effects of atomic radiation on the human body. He undertook four years of surgical training in the U.S. before returning to Canada in 1961 to complete his post-graduate studies at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montréal. After becoming a staff member of the Department of Surgery, he chose to become a surgical oncologist. He initiated the first Surgical Oncology Training Program at McGill University in 1978. In 1988, he founded the Canadian Society of Surgical Oncology. As well, in 1963 he co-founded the Montréal Academy Club to assist Japanese post-graduate researchers to adapt to life in Canada, for which he received a medal from the Government of Japan and a Lifetime Achievement Award from McGill University.

• Matt Miwa, OJCA Board Member and co-creator of the Tashme Project: The Living Archives

  Matt Miwa and Julie Tamiko Manning are collaborators and professional theatre artists who began creating The Tashme Project: The Living Archives in 2009. A verbatim or documentary theatre piece, Tashme integrates the testimonies of 20 Nisei from across the country. Originally presented as a reading at the 2010 Powell Street Festival, Tashme has also been presented in readings and small-scale productions in Toronto, Ottawa and Montréal. This November, Tashme will embark on the first national tour of its full production in Montréal, Toronto, Vancouver and Kitchener-Waterloo. Performing this piece is a pleasure for Matt and Julie, who dedicate this play as a testament to Nisei spirit, voice and story.

• Julie Tamiko Manning, Co-creator of the Tashme Project: The Living Archives

  Matt Miwa and Julie Tamiko Manning are collaborators and professional theatre artists who began creating The Tashme Project: The Living Archives in 2009. A verbatim or documentary theatre piece, Tashme integrates the testimonies of 20 Nisei from across the country. Originally presented as a reading at the 2010 Powell Street Festival, Tashme has also been presented in readings and small-scale productions in Toronto, Ottawa and Montréal. This November, Tashme will embark on the first national tour of its full production in Montréal, Toronto, Vancouver and Kitchener-Waterloo. Performing this piece is a pleasure for Matt and Julie, who dedicate this play as a testament to Nisei spirit, voice and story.

• Melisa Kamibayashi-Staples, OJCA Board Member; Moderator

  Melisa Kamibayashi-Staples is a third-generation Japanese Canadian whose parents’ involvement in the fight for Japanese Canadian redress in the 1980s had a lasting impact on her sense of identity and community. Melisa’s honours thesis at Queen’s University was on Japanese Canadian identity, and upon graduation she participated in the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme in Oita, Japan. She studied and performed taiko drumming in Japan and Canada for over a decade, and worked at the Canada Pavilion during World Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan. She has served on the boards of the Ottawa Japanese Community Association, the Ottawa Japanese Cultural Centre, and the Ottawa Asian Heritage Month Society, and has contributed to “Contact Japan,” the local Japanese community TV program, since 1997. Melisa works at the Canada Council for the Arts. She firmly believes that art has the ability to empower us to connect by telling our own stories our way.

• Art Miki, Internee (Ste. Agathe, Manitoba), former President of the NAJC, and Chief Strategist and Negotiator for Japanese Canadian Redress

  Dr. Arthur K. Miki, CM, OM, has had a distinguished career as an educator and community activist. Born in British Columbia in 1932, he was among the 22,000 Canadians of Japanese origin who were displaced and interned during World War II. His family was forced to leave their six-hectare fruit farm near Vancouver, and was relocated to an uninsulated shack in Ste. Agathe, Manitoba that they shared with other families.

  He began his career as an elementary school teacher and later served as a school principal for 18 years. Throughout his career in education, he promoted positive race relations and sought to increase awareness of human rights issues in Canada.

  From 1984 to 1992, he served as President of the National Association of Japanese Canadians (NAJC) and led the negotiations to achieve the Japanese Canadian Redress Agreement, which was signed on September 22, 1988.

• Anne Scotton, First Executive Director of the Japanese Canadian Redress Secretariat

  From 1986 to 1988, Anne Scotton played a key role representing Canada during the negotiation phase of the Japanese Canadian Redress Agreement. During the implementation phase of the Agreement, as the first Executive Director of the Japanese Canadian Redress Secretariat, she led a team that worked closely with the National Association of Japanese Canadians (NAJC) and Japanese Canadians across the country to reach everyone eligible for redress payments.

  Later, Anne became the founding Executive Director of the Multiculturalism Secretariat and worked on the Canadian Race Relations Foundation. She is now the Regional Director General, Ontario Region of Indigenous Services Canada.

  Anne has served her local community as President of the Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa-Carleton, Trustee and Chair of the Ottawa Board of Education’s Management Committee, and President of the Glebe Community Association. At present, she is Vice President of the Board of The Glebe Centre, a long-term care facility.

• Gabrielle Nishiguchi, Archivist, Government Archives Division, LAC

  Gabrielle Nishiguchi is an archivist in Government Archives Division at Library and Archives Canada (LAC). She has spoken about human rights and the use of archival records at the International Conference of the Round Table on Archives, held in Cape Town, South Africa, and the Conference of the Association of Canadian Archivists. Gabrielle was program consultant for the CBC documentary “Throwaway Citizens” about the 1946 deportations of Japanese Canadians—a subject she continues to research. She took part in the Price Waterhouse Study of the Economic Losses of Japanese Canadians (1941–1949), which extracted financial information from the Custodian of Enemy Property records held at LAC. Price Waterhouse’s loss estimate of $443 million (1986 dollars) was used by the National Association of Japanese Canadians during its historic Redress Campaign. Participation in this study dramatically underscored for her both the evidential and healing power of archival records.

• Ted Itani, Internee (Hastings Park, East Lillooet and Greenwood, British Columbia), retired military officer and humanitarian

  Tetsuo Theodore (Ted) Itani, CM, OMM, CD, is a third-generation Japanese Canadian. In 1942, he and his family were forcibly removed from their home in Ucluelet on Vancouver Island and relocated, first to the Livestock Building in Hastings Park, Vancouver, and then to East Lillooet in the B.C. interior.

  After the war, Ted joined the cadets and was later commissioned into the Canadian Army. During his 37-year military career, he was involved in peacekeeping, humanitarian and refugee-assistance missions spanning the globe. He provided expert testimony to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and was on the International Committee of the Red Cross landmine study team that contributed to the Ottawa Treaty of 1997.  

  Following his retirement from the military, he worked on disaster relief and recovery operations in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, while serving concurrently as faculty with the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre. He continues to volunteer with the Canadian Red Cross, NGOs, and academia.

• Andrew Cardozo, Former Executive Director of the Canadian Ethnocultural Council

  Andrew Cardozo is President of the Pearson Centre, a leading Canadian progressive think tank, an adjunct professor at Carleton University, and a columnist for the Ottawa-based Hill Times. He was Executive Director of the Canadian Ethnocultural Council during the period in which Japanese Canadian Redress was being developed and negotiated with the federal government. He played an active role in bringing other ethnocultural groups on side for the campaign. He has also been a Commissioner at the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) and worked in the office of the Multiculturalism Minister in the early 1980s.