Japanese Canadians

Around Vancouver Island.

Last week, this program carried the unveiling of a mural in Shumay News honoring the Japanese Canadians who were uprooted from that town.

This week, the same history at a different scale.

Liam Roselle of the Nanaimo News Bulletin reports a new monument has opened minutes from the legislature in Victoria.

At its center is a wall three hundred feet long, a hundred granite panels carrying the names of nearly twenty-two thousand Japanese Canadians displaced during the Second World War and the more than three thousand children born between nineteen forty-two and nineteen forty-nine.

Paul Kariya, president of the Japanese Canadian Legacy Society, put the limits of it plainly.

A monument does not restore homes, businesses, fish boats, property, or the years that were taken, but it can make a positive record permanent.

Some families were given as little as twenty-four hours to leave.

A new monument in Victoria is serving as a poignant reminder of a difficult chapter in British Columbia's history.

The Japanese Canadian Monument opened this weekend at Academy Close, between Beacon Hill Park and Street, and features the names of over twenty-two thousand people who were unjustly removed from their homes during the Second World War.

Many families traveled to attend the dedication ceremony.

It acknowledges the forced relocation and loss of property experienced by Japanese Canadians, with names listed according to where they were originally living, including hundreds from Victoria and Main Island.

The monument's design includes granite slabs etched with these names, a powerful testament to a time when homes, businesses, and personal belongings were seized and sold off.

It's an important space for reflection and remembrance.

[Instrumental music] A new memorial in Victoria is being unveiled today.

It honors thousands of Japanese Canadians uprooted during the Second World War.

The monument features 100 granite panels listing the names of nearly 22,000 people subjected to forced internment and dispossession.

John Nagamatsu is interim executive director of the Japanese Canadian Legacy Society, the group that spearheaded the project.

I'm sure my family's not the only one that had the experience of, uh, our parents not talking to us about what had happened, um, you know, some almost 80 years ago.

Um, and I think, uh, generationally we've, I, I think, learned to forgive, and we certainly hope, uh, genuinely that, uh, no other community across Canada ever has to endure, uh, what, uh, the Japanese, uh, community endured.

Organizers say the 91-meter-long wall of names is designed as a space for reflection and education.

Quebec's provincial election is in its home stretch.

and a second piece of public art reckoning with history, this one in Shumenus.

The Nanaimo News Bulletin reports around 200 people gathered on Croft Street last month, the crowd spilling into the road, as a mural was unveiled, honoring the Japanese Canadians who lived and worked in the town before being forcibly uprooted during the Second World War.

The installation, called Remembering and Honoring Japanese Canadians in Shumenus, centers on a mural 8 feet high and 16 feet long, showing scenes of the community before the war, including its place in the fishing and forestry industries.

The ceremony opened and closed with performances by Shachihoko Taiko and the Naimo-based Japanese drumming group.

Around Vancouver Island Down Island, Some Relief CHEK News reports the high-risk missing teenager Saanich police had been searching for has been found safe.

Police had asked the public to watch for the youth, who was last seen near Saanich Center and believed to be traveling on foot, and had said there were significant concerns for their safety and well-being.