Long Version


Welcome to the Nikkei Memory Capture Project’s Audio Journey!

This audio journey is a collaboration between the Nikkei Memory Capture Project and the Nikka Yuko Japanese Garden in Lethbridge, Alberta. The longer entries below expand on and complement and the histories represented on the Time Map located in the Bunka Centre at the Garden.

Enjoy these longer audio journeys from your own space.

Please begin by listening to the welcome greeting.

100: Welcome Greeting

HISTORIES OF DISTINCTION

There is a common phrase that is said to characterize the history of Japanese Canadians: Shikata ga nai – it can’t be helped. This phrase powerfully conveys how, following their persecutions during the Second World War, Japanese Canadians turned away from the past, and instead moved on with their lives to reclaim their place in Canada. Indeed, the creation of a cherished site of Japanese culture in southern Alberta, the Nikka Yuko Japanese Garden, as Lethbridge’s preeminent centennial project, symbolizes the quiet and dignified effort.

The Japanese Canadian history of southern Alberta comprises diverse histories which overlap and diverge. There were many communities in the first half of the twentieth century making up southern Alberta’s Japanese Canadians, whose aspirations, priorities, loyalties, and perspectives converged and conflicted.

Japanese Canadians created, innovated, integrated, protested, and above all shaped southern Alberta for themselves, impacting the lives of their neighbours in increasingly layered, complex, and integral ways. Shikata ga nai is not only it can’t be helped but also figuratively means, our way is another way.

Waves of Migration
501: The Japanese Diaspora – The Trans-Pacific and Canadian Contexts
502: Southern Alberta’s Early Japanese Settlers – The Three Waves of Migration
503: The Third Wave of Migration – Shakonsai ‘Picture Brides’ nikkei memory capture project logo
504: Picture Brides in Historical Context: The 1908 Hayashi-Lemieux Gentleman’s Agreement
Structures of Settlement
505: Structures of Settlement: Nihonjin Kyokai, Okinawa Doshikai, Raymond Buddhist Temple
506: Settling Southern Alberta: Good Years, Bad Years
507: Recollections of Sugar Beet Farming

HISTORIES OF VIOLENCE

On 7 and 8 December 1941, Imperial Japanese forces attacked the United States in Hawai’i and the British Empire in Hong Kong and Malaya. Opportunistically, the Dominion of Canada systematically expelled over 21,000 Japanese Canadians from the West Coast. The removal of Japanese Canadians into incarceration and internment settings, including southern Alberta, was spurred by anti-Japanese racism in British Columbia. Designated as “enemy aliens” Japanese Canadians were stripped of their civil rights as Canadian citizens. In 1944, the Prime Minister admitted to the House of Commons that no Japanese Canadian was found to have been a security threat. The so-called “evacuation” of Japanese Canadians was a failure of Canadian democracy.

The Five dimensions of ‘Evacuation’
601: Introduction

Displacement

602: Mass Incarceration and Internment, ‘Keeping the family together’ nikkei memory capture project logo
603: Displacement to Southern Alberta: ‘Gumbo’; ‘Heartbreak’ nikkei memory capture project logo
604: Kaye Otsuka read by her daughter Neva nikkei memory capture project logo

Detention

605: ‘There were maggots all over’ nikkei memory capture project logo

Dispossession

606: ‘The loss of his farm’ nikkei memory capture project logo
607: ‘They shut us down completely’ nikkei memory capture project logo

Dispersal

608: Dispersal
609: Deportation to Japan: ‘Amerika-jin ja nai! nikkei memory capture project logo

Division

610: ‘Four groupings of Japanese’ nikkei memory capture project logo
The Hisaoka Family Memoirs
611: Introduction nikkei memory capture project logo
612: Journey East – Leaving Mission, Arriving in Lethbridge nikkei memory capture project logo
613: Families Sorted, Selected, and Scattered nikkei memory capture project logo
614: Making a Sugar Beet Shack into the Hisaoka Home nikkei memory capture project logo
615: Food, Fuel, Water nikkei memory capture project logo
616: Glichan’s Ingenuity nikkei memory capture project logo
617: Cycles of Labour nikkei memory capture project logo
Working and Singing the Sugar Beets
618: ‘That hook went through my boots and caught my toe’ nikkei memory capture project logo

NISEI FLOURISH

Although the Second World War ended in 1945, wartime restrictions on Japanese Canadians were not removed until 1949. With the restoration of their civil rights, they increasingly mixed in wider society in public settings like school and work. However, social life remained largely segregated. In this context, Japanese Canadians – especially the Nisei drew on their own Japanese resources, even as they sought outwardly to integrate into mainstream society. The result was a flourishing of Japanese Canadian life networked across cultural activities and events, food, sporting leagues and competitions, business innovations, religious communion, and of course most visibly, the Nikka Yuko Japanese Garden. There was never any danger that they would form an ethnic enclave, nevertheless, the cultural and social infrastructure they evolved was akin to a ‘Japan Town’ in southern Alberta.

Early postwar Re(Emergence)

The Intrepid Nisei

701: Introduction – ‘People looked up to me’ nikkei memory capture project logo
702: Getting a Trade – ‘They opened SAIT’ nikkei memory capture project logo
703: Becoming a Teacher – ‘I was just a little country kid’ nikkei memory capture project logo
704: The Memories of Geri Miyashiro nikkei memory capture project logo
705: Setting up a Business – ‘He pulled his revolver out…’ nikkei memory capture project logo
706: Higher Education – ‘I worked as a house-boy’ nikkei memory capture project logo
707: Memories of Becoming a Nurse: ‘Very strict, yes, very strict’ nikkei memory capture project logo
708: Reprise – Assimilation

Emerging Communities

709: The Japanese Canadian Citizens Association (JCCA) nikkei memory capture project logo
710: JCCA – Centrifugal Forces?
711: JCCA – Lethbridge and District Japanese Community Association Gentleman’s Dinner
712: The Young Buddhist Association (YBA) – Introduction
713: The YBA, Inheritance and Legacies – ‘I never worried about being Japanese’ nikkei memory capture project logo
714: The YBA and What We Did: Outing and Excursions – ‘We’d make the guys get in the truck, and go to the drive innikkei memory capture project logo
715: The YBA and What We Did: Miss Sunny Alberta – ‘They asked you questions, and you had to answer them as best you could’ nikkei memory capture project logo
716: The YBA and What We Did: Variety Show Shibai (plays) – ‘We used to take bento and the concerts would last all day’ nikkei memory capture project logo
717: The YBA and What We Did: Film Nights – ‘Mr. Okabe used to do the narrations.’ nikkei memory capture project logo
718: The YBA and the Politics of Dancing – ‘Baka! Onna a daite, nani suru tsumori?’ nikkei memory capture project logo
719: Glimpses of Personal Life: Taking a Bath – ‘We were called the bath-house gang’ nikkei memory capture project logo
POstwar transformations

Communities Overcoming Discrimination

801: ‘There was real conflict there’ nikkei memory capture project logo
802: ‘No vacancy’nikkei memory capture project logo
803: ‘Didn’t you get served?’ nikkei memory capture project logo
804: ‘He was so ashamed.’ nikkei memory capture project logo
805: Fighting City Hall – ‘We were constantly trying to get discrimination down.’ nikkei memory capture project logo
806: Working as a Female Domestic – ‘She was a bear.’ nikkei memory capture project logo

Transforming Southern Alberta

807: ‘If she’s gonna do something, she’s gonna do it’; ‘he went to bat for use with the government’ nikkei memory capture project logo
808: Crossing Lines of Desire: Interracial Marriage – ‘How I felt about dating a hakujinnikkei memory capture project logo
809: Interracial Marriage and Its Significance
810: Interracial Marriage in the Early Half of the Twentieth Century
812: The Emotions of Interracial Marriage – ‘We’ll all wonder, what’s Japanese?’ nikkei memory capture project logo
814: The Emotions of Interracial Marriage – ‘Very proud to be Japanese.’ nikkei memory capture project logo

Buddhism in Southern Alberta

815: Introduction
816: Buddhism in Southern Alberta – The Picture Butte Buddhist Church
817: Similar Histories of Southern Alberta’s Buddhist Temples
819: Schism

NISEI FUTURE

In the summer of 2022, the Nikka Yuko Japanese Garden officially opened its Bunka Centre. In many ways, it culminated over a hundred years of Japanese Canadian history. It is a tangible legacy of the vision of southern Alberta’s Japanese early settlers to establish an enduring Japanese community proud of its ethnic and cultural heritage. It is a remembrance of waves of migration, struggles overcome, persecutions survived, hardships endured and shikata ga nai – it can’t be helped, out way is another way. But, that is not all. It is a celebration of communities thriving, friends made, families nourished, and above all, creativity, innovation, and resilience. It draws off of the richness and resources of Japanese culture as a global culture that helps to define the twenty-first century. Born of Japanese inspiration and evolving in southern Alberta, the Bunka Centre proclaims in optimism and with aspiration, shikata ga aru – there is a way: imagine, shape, and embrace the histories of our collective future.