Landscapes of Injustice
From the Royal BC Museum
Many records related to Japanese Canadian dispossession are held at BC Archives and were digitized by the Landscapes of Injustice researchers.
Educator Tomo Nishizawa describes how Shigekazu Matsunaga’s boat was confiscated in 1941.
Educator Tomo Nishizawa writes about the history of the Japanese Tea Garden at Esquimalt Gorge Park.
Outside Links
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Landscapes of Injustice is a project about the displacement and dispossession of thousands of Japanese Canadians in Canada in the 1940s. This website is a rich aggregate of resources and storytelling.
Located in Burnaby, BC the Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre honours, preserves and shares Japanese culture and Japanese Canadian history and heritage for a better Canada.
A digital archive that houses multimedia files related to the history of Japanese Canadians.
This exhibition, launched at Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre in 2020, focusses on the dispossession of property owned by Japanese Canadians and will travel to the Royal BC Museum in 2022.
The Museum at Campbell River received an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Heritage Society of British Columbia for the restoration of the historic fishing boat, Soyokaze.
A publication by the University of Victoria and The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives exploring the history of racism in British Columbia. Chapter Five is titled “The Attempted Ethnic Cleansing of Japanese Canadians.”
Explore newspaper articles written by the Japanese Canadian newspaper society, The New Canadian, from 1939 to 2001. The articles feature perspectives of the Nisei (second generation Japanese Canadians born in Canada).
A map of British Columbia that identifies historically significant places to the Japanese Canadian community.
Watch former prime minister Brian Mulroney apologize to Japanese Canadians in 1988 after many years of campaigns for redress.
Watch a documentary about the Takata family, owners of the Japanese Tea Garden in Esquimalt. Read more about the Tea Garden in the article at the top of this page by educator Tomo Nishizawa.
Explore the dark history of how the Pacific National Exhibition (PNE) grounds in Vancouver was used as a temporary detention camp in 1942.
Watch National Film Board’s documentary about the life of Minoru, who faced prejudices in Japan when his family was exiled in 1946.
Explore the legend of the Vancouver Asahi Baseball Team, a symbol of pride for the Nikkei community.
Obasan (1981) is a story inspired by Joy Kogawa’s experiences of being uprooted from her home in Vancouver. Since 2009, her house has been used to host writers-in-residence programs.