Gordon Hirabayashi as a UW student in the 1940's. Photo by Sharon Maeda/The Wing Luke Asian Museum.

The Dr. Gordon Hirabayashi Human Rights Award is a newly created award to honour the work and legacy of Dr. Gordon Hirabayashi of Edmonton.  The award will be presented  every two years in recognition of an individual or organization  who has contributed to the development or promotion of human rights and equity in Canada.

Deadline for nominations is June 30, 2012 and providing there is a suitable candidate, the award will be presented at the 2012 AGM in Kamloops.

The occasion was dubbed “Thank You, Whitehorse” Concert, and was sponsored by the Consulate General of Japan in Vancouver and organized by the Japanese Canadian Association of Yukon (JCAY).  It was an opportunity for JCAY to express its gratitude for the tremendous support and generosity shown by the people in the community toward the fundraising activities a year ago.  Thanks to the overwhelming local community support, JCAY was able to donate $40,600.38 directly to the Japanese Red Cross Society to aid the relief effort in northeastern Japan in a timely fashion.

Consul Isono, who accompanied the artists to Whitehorse, offered a word of gratitude to the people in the community at the beginning of the concert.  He also brought a number of display panels to show the audience the recovery effort that is progressing in the disaster areas.

The audience was totally captivated throughout by the sound of the ancient Japanese music.  After an enthusiastic applause following the final piece, many audience members came to the apron of the stage to see the unfamiliar instruments up close.  They threw hoards of questions to the artists, who amiably answered all those questions before they packed up the instruments.

One audience member posted the following comment on the local ArtsNet the following day, which seemed to represent the feelings of the entire audience:

“Thank-you to Fumi Torigai of the Japanese Canadian Assoc. of Yukon and the Consulate General of Japan in Vancouver for a rare musical treat last night at the Yukon Arts Centre . Koto master Yuriko Nariya and Shakuhachi master Takeo Yamashiro held the audience enthralled for a two hour concert of six pieces ranging from the 17th century up to contemporary compositions. Hopefully the enthusiastic response of the audience will encourage all involved to bring more of this caliber of traditional Japanese music to Whitehorse in the future.”

It is apparent that the sharing of the beauty of Japanese traditional music not only serves the purpose of promoting the better understanding and appreciation of the Japanese culture among local populations, but also somehow helps bring people together and deepen our understanding of each other.  These kind of events are undoubtedly conducive to building a community where people of different cultural background can call home and live together harmoniously.

Reported by Fumi Torigai

President, JCAY

Canada’s History
Two new books tailor made for the classroom are the book by Susan Aihoshi and a book co-authored by long-time educator, Masako Fukawa. The April Bulletin featured Susan’s book, Torn Apart: The Internment Diary of Mary Kobayashi, published by Scholastic Company’s Dear Canada series of publications. Masako and Pamela Hickman’s book, Japanese Canadian Internment in the Second World War, is part of the “Righting Canada’s Wrong“ series of books published by James Lorimer and Company. Both companies are to be commended for releasing new titles in a highly competitive educational textbook market in an uncertain economic climate.

Publishers must be control costs in order to secure orders from schools that are faced with annual cutbacks in spending. The price of a hardcover book increases annually and school departments make do by using outdated textbooks. One method of controlling publication cost is to reduce the number of pages and to pare down historical content – in many cases it is the history of minority groups in Canada that is affected. I believe that more space must be given to the history and the contributions of ethnic minorities in the development of Canada in order to offset the Eurocentric bias in most history books. The marginalization of Canada’s minorities feeds the myth of ‘recent immigrants.’

In addition to issues surrounding textbook content, the major challenge for a classroom teacher is the persistent lack of class time to complete the prescribed units of study in a course. Traditionally, the Japanese Canadian internment is dealt with in the World War II unit of study which is about two weeks in duration. Given the time restriction, the Internment is given about one class period – two at the most. If a thematic approach is taken, then the history of Japanese Canadians can be infused in other units such as the Canadian Government and Law. Increasing homework and self-directed learning are two ways in which teachers try to complete units of study. In the thirty years that I was in the classroom, I was unable to complete all units in a course. For most Canadian history teachers, it is a struggle to reach the Trudeau era of the 1970s.

The two books by Susan and Masako will be an invaluable resource in Canadian classrooms and will help keep alive the important lessons of the internment and the Redress settlement.

More books
As was reported in the April issue of Nikkei Voice, Nikkei Kanadajin no Tsuihou (Uprooted Again) dealing with the expulsion of Japanese Canadians to Japan written by the long time human rights activist, Tatsuo Kage, and translated by Kathleen Merken is now being distributed. I eagerly await my copy of this invaluable resource.

Lastly, Grace Thomson, NAJC Past President, has informed us that the Asian Canadian Studies Society is raising funds for the translation of the Norio Goto’s excellent book, Story of Vancouver’s Asahi. Donors will receive a tax receipt. Please mail your contributions to: Asian Canadian Studies Society, 2352 Brock Street, Vancouver, BC. V5N 2Z8.