Past Events

Speaker Series with Greg Robinson

A Tragedy of Democracy – Japanese Confinement in North America
March 9, 2010, 7pm
Intergenerational Room 105
Free admission, book will be available for purchase at the event

Greg Robinson will present a talk on his recent book A Tragedy of Democracy. This is the first book to analyze official policy toward West Coast Japanese Americans within a North American context. Approaching Japanese confinement as a continental and international phenomenon, Robinson offers a truly kaleidoscopic understanding of its genesis and outcomes.

Historians of Japanese Canadian internment and confinement during World War II, like those who study the experience of Japanese Americans, have tended to look at the subject only within national boundaries. Astoundingly, no past work has ever been published that looks at the history of the camps in the United States alongside that of the Canadian government’s wartime removal and confinement of Japanese Canadians. Yet it is imperative to look transnationally in order to understand events in depth. The decisions by the respective governments to issue PC 1486 and Executive Order 9066, and the confinement policies that flowed from them, fit into a wider international—indeed continental—pattern of official treatment of people of Japanese ancestry. A study of the similarities and differences in the experience of people across the border provides a greater and more balanced perspective on any number of overall questions relating to both groups: What drove confinement? What choices existed in administering it? How did people survive? Lastly and perhaps most importantly, what can a comparative analysis tell us about the postwar condition of Issei and Nisei in Canada and the United States? Despite certain commonalities, the variations across borders in official policies with regard to people of Japanese ancestry were significant, in kind as well as in degree. In the United States, exclusion was lifted as of the beginning of January 1945, and Issei and Nisei returned to the West Coast in large numbers even before the war was over. In contrast, Ottawa’s policy was to pressure Japanese Canadians into giving up their citizenship and leaving the country entirely, or failing that, to move east of the Rockies and disperse into small groups. How do we explain this striking contrast, and what does it reveal about the two societies?

Two Views, Film Screenings

Saturday, February 27, 2pm
Kaede Room 210
Admission by donation

Copyright: Leonard Frank by Director Eli Gorn
Leonard Frank came from Germany to Canada in 1892. Overwhelmed by the beauty and grandeur of his new homeland, he started carrying a camera with him into the back country. Leonard Frank became one of Canada’s greatest photographers. 23 minutes.

Pilgrimage by Tadashi Nakamura
With a hip music track, never-before-seen archival footage and a story-telling style that features both old and new pilgrims, PILGRIMAGE is the first film to show how the WWII camps were reclaimed by the children of its victims. The Manzanar Pilgrimage now has fresh meaning for diverse generations of people.  It was failure of democracy that would affect all Americans. This film brings new and much-needed insight to the lessons of the past for our post-9/11 world. 22 minutes.

Photography Workshop
Shoot like a Pro with your Digital SLR Camera
Beginner/Intermediate

Saturday, February 20, 2010, 2-5pm
$20

In this no-holds-barred workshop we take advantage of the professional capabilities inherent in all Digital SLR cameras to create beautiful photos. With understanding the manual controls and compositional techniques explore how to improve the aesthetic of images. We’ll spend some time taking photos around the grounds of the Nikkei Center and will share and critique our photos with the class. Required Equipment: Digital SLR camera & your camera’s manual.

This workshop will be lead by Greg Masuda, a community-involved professional photographer, filmmaker and photography tutor.  He has contributed his photography and filmmaking skills to organizations such as Pivot Legal Society’s Hope in Shadows project, the University of British Columbia’s Center for Health Promotion Research, the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House’s Splendour In The Night project, the Powell Street Festival Society, the National Nikkei Heritage Center, and the Kids Cancer Care Foundation of Alberta.  He has been photographing professionally for ten years.