Hello All--Please join me in welcoming Mike Abe, our wonderful Project Manager, back from a very important community-based project, to which he dedicated a year of work. And thank you so much to Anthony, who filled-in so ably and will remain a member of the UVIC community. He has generously agreed to continue giving PWFC some support in the coming months, despite exciting new opportunities (and responsibilities) of his own with another initiative.

We're blessed to have such fantastic project managers steering the ship.

Jordan

54

5:01 pm

04 Feb 2024

Hello again, 

This is Mike Abe and I’m very happy to be back in the role as Project Manager for Past Wrongs, Future Choices. I want to thank Anthony for his hard work and diligence to keep the project progressing smoothly. He will be around for a while helping me get back up to speed. 

My contact info is mkabe@uvic.ca The project office is Fraser Building A168 in the Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives at the University of Victoria. 

My office hours are Tuesday-Friday, 8:30-4:30.

Attached, please find my traditional New Year’s card (Nenga jo). Either a belated O-shogatsu or an early Gung Hay Fat Choy, I hope you all have a wonderful 2024 Year of the Dragon. 

I look forward to working you all again. 

Mike

53

12:07 pm

02 Feb 2024

Tune in tonight to the Japanese American National Museum's Nima Voices at 7 pm (Pacific) for an interview of Michael Abe, Project Manager of Past Wrongs, Future Choices, hosted by our project's own Sherri Kajiwara.

https://www.janm.org/events/2023-10-04/nima-voices-episode-14-michael-kenji-abe

And find out the story behind the scruffy beard. 

44

1:52 pm

03 Oct 2023

Hello all,

We would like to draw everyone's attention to Janis Bridger and Lara Jean Okihiro's (members of our PWFC community) book launches this month for Obaasan’s Boots. Please see the posters for more information.

43

9:55 am

03 Oct 2023

Board member Christine Piper has a new, Japanese language version of her novel out! Congratulations, Christine!

42

10:00 am

22 Aug 2023

Hello all, I am posting on behalf of Elysha Rei and our friends at Nikkei Australia. Please see the event of interest below!

QSA Talks: Japanese War Brides – a Queensland story

Friday 25 August 11am, online and at Queensland State Archives, 435 Compton Road, Runcorn

Join Dr Keiko Tamura & Elysha Rei in a co-hosted event with the Consulate-General of Japan in Brisbane & QSA about Japanese war brides.

In this talk Dr Tamura (author of Michi’s Memories) will cover the national narrative of war bride arrival in Australia, and Rei will share her family history story of her grandmother – a war bride who was based in Queensland.

This presentation will illuminate the stories and experiences of Japanese women who immigrated to Australia as war brides in the 1950s, marking more than 70 years since the first Japanese war bride arrived in Australia in 1952.

Join us in person or online for a historical and personal narrative, celebrating the important contribution Japanese war brides have made in changing the landscape of Australian immigration.

Please note in-person capacity is limited. Register via Eventbrite to secure your place.

Please note that if you are interested in viewing this event, timezones do apply! Aug 25 at 11:00am is:

August 24, 6:00pm PST (Canada/US Pacific Coast)

August 24, 9:00pm, EST (Ontario/US Atlantic Coast)

August 24, 10:00pm, GMT-3 (Brazil/São Paulo)

41

9:24 am

04 Aug 2023

Keyword Session: Citizenship

Dear Past Wrongs, Future Choices Collective,

Please mark your calendars for July 19/20, when we will hold our next keyword session.

On Thursday July 20th, Sydney Australia Time (corresponding times below), four exciting scholars from across the globe (Daniela Caglioti, Rebecca Hausler, Rayner Thwaites, and Neilesh Bose) will discuss social, political, and legal facets of citizenship, drawing upon their own work to shed light on a concept central to many histories of the mistreatment of people of Japanese descent in the 1940s, and its legacies since.

This event is co-organized by Christine Piper, Nikkei Australia.

Please mark your calendars. A zoom link and more information will follow.

Date/Time:

Sydney, Australia: Thursday July 20th, 11 AM- 12:15 PM

Eastern North America: Wednesday, July 19th, 9-10:15 pm

West Coast North America: Wednesday, July 19th, 6-7:15 pm

Brazil, Sao Paulo: Wednesday, July 19, 10-11:15 pm

Tokyo, Thursday July 20th, 10 AM- 11:15 AM

40

11:02 pm

03 Jul 2023

Hello everyone!

We have posted the Executive Summaries from the Board Meetings. They can be found in the Forum section. We have also posted the Integration Board's Terms of Reference document -- also in the Forum.

39

1:01 pm

27 Jun 2023

Experiencing War Memorials: Place, Feeling, and Public Memory

Call for chapter submissions to a book manuscript.

Editor: Dr. Jennifer K. Ladino

War memorialization is an emotional as well as an ideological process–and one that is profoundly shaped by the physical environment at memorial sites. This volume of essays aims to better understand commemorative processes by gathering scholarship at the interdisciplinary confluence of war studies, affect studies, public memory studies, and the environmental humanities. War memorials and public commemoration have been controversial subjects in the U.S. and elsewhere in recent years. What counts as “heritage” as well as how—and where—we should appropriately mark historical and ongoing violence are hotly debated issues. Although public discourse frequently gets emotional, scholarship too often neglects the messy affective dimensions of public memory, especially when historical and ongoing trauma tied to war and violence are at stake. How do emotions such as guilt, pride, shame, regret, nostalgia, patriotism, and outrage function in commemorating war? What new forms are war memorials taking, and how do these forms and their mnemonic features—statues, cemeteries, and walls of names, but also sculptures, digital archives, museum exhibits, holographs, uniforms, and other artifacts—carry affective dimensions? How do environmental features shape visitors’ affective and intellectual apprehension of the legacies of violence and injustice? In what senses might the violence connected to climate change be considered “war”?

This CFP invites contributors from a range of disciplinary, historical, and national contexts to address these and related questions. The editor seeks to showcase a diverse range of genres (literature, art, music, and film, etc.) and physical sites, including museums, urban centers, public squares, virtual memorials, and national and state parks. Time period and geographic focus are open, to encourage a broad approach to the subject matter, including theoretical frameworks and intersections that are applicable across a range of nations, historical periods, and forms of violence. Topics may include:

●    war memorialization and affect theory
●    the relationship between the physical environment and public feeling at sites of war remembrance
●    war memorialization and forms of trauma and injustice, including colonization, capitalism, racism, and environmental destruction
●    violence, commemoration, and climate change and/as war
●    literature, film, art, emotion, and war commemoration
●    emotions and affective atmospheres in commemorative spaces (landscapes, soundscapes, museums, tourist sites, etc.)
●    guilt, shame, regret, pride, anger, outrage, patriotism, and other specific emotions in war memorialization
●    uniforms and other artifacts and/as commemorative objects
●    digital archives and virtual war memorials
●    how and why war memorials produce different emotions over time

Please send a 250-300-word abstract and a CV by September 1, 2023 to Jennifer Ladino at jladino@uidaho.edu.

Full manuscripts for selected submissions will be due in January of 2024. The University of Alabama Press has agreed to review the completed manuscript for inclusion in its “War, Memory, and Culture” series.

38

12:20 pm

21 Jun 2023

Dear Colleagues,

We would love to see members of the PWFC partnership forming panels and presenting at conferences together. Hopefully, we can begin to build a sense within our fields that the global history of Nikkei in the 1940s is of significance and interest. We're happy to circulate calls for presenters, or to have you post them yourselves here, in HSS Commons.

Thank you Aya Fujiwara (University of Alberta) for starting this off:

Aya writes: If anyone is interested in joining the history panel on Japanese Canadians at the Japan Studies Association for Canada's annual conference in Saskatchewan, 28 September - 1 October 2023, please contact Aya Fujiwara fujiwara@ualberta.ca by 20 June 2023. This conference's focus is on Japan but there are often some panels and papers that deal with the Japanese overseas. It's a group of very friendly people.

37

2:58 pm

19 May 2023

Hello all,

This is a reminder of our participation in an in-person and online event on Wednesday (May 17th). Past Wrongs, Future Choices scholars Jordan Stanger-Ross and Andrea Mariko Grant will be featuring in a panel discussion alongside two other teams based out of the University of Victoria that are also working with SSHRC Partnership Grants. The talk, titled “Ethics and the Digital Archive: Reflections from Community-Engaged Partnership” is being hosted by UVic Humanities and will be offered in person (Uvic Hickman Building 105) and online, registration can be found here: https://events.uvic.ca/event/74460-ethics-and-the-archive-reflections-from

Everyone is encouraged to attend either on campus or virtually.

35

11:25 am

15 May 2023

PWFC Announcements and News:

Dear fellow PWFC’ers,

The past few months have been very busy for the Project Office and many members of the PWFC community. We have concluded our second residency program and our looking forward to welcoming our newest cohort of visiting scholars and began our third on Sunday May 7^th. Welcome residents! We are publishing this a short news blast to keep you up to date with all of the wonderful things folks have been up too.

Upcoming Event of Interest:

May 17: Ethics and the Digital Archive

Please consider joining us for an upcoming talk featuring our own Dr. Jordan Stanger-Ross and Dr. Andrea Mariko Grant as they discuss the ethics of archival research alongside two other teams based out of the University of Victoria that are also working with SSHRC Partnership Grants. The talk, titled ““Ethics and the Digital Archive: Reflections from Community-Engaged Partnership” is being hosted by UVic Humanities and will be offered in person (Uvic Hickman Building 105) and online, registration can be found here: https://events.uvic.ca/event/74460-ethics-and-the-archive-reflections-from

PWFC Artist in Residence Elysha Rei Featured by CBC Toronto:

Hailing from Brisbane Australia, Elysha Rei chairs Nikkei Australia and recently participated in the PWFC winter residency program. Elysha is a talented paper cut artist of Nikkei decent who we have gotten to know and admire over the past 4 months. Elysha is currently acting as a spotlight researcher with our Archives Cluster looking at the role of gardens in internment and carceral settings. Following her stint in residence at the University of Victoria where she worked diligently in a studio space provided by the Department of Visual Arts, Elysha went to Toronto to install a piece commissioned by the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre to celebrate their 60^th anniversary. To learn more about the powerful work that Elysha is doing check out her interview with CBC Toronto!

Works in Discover Nikkei:

PWFC is also celebrating the publication of several works in Discover Nikkei. The first, “The legacy of Toyo Takata, Who Captured the Voice of Japanese Canadians” was written by former PWFC Scholar in Residence Jonathan Van Harmelen. Jonathan is a PhD Candidate at UC Santa Cruz, and we are also lucky to be able to share with you all that Jonathan has become a leading researcher on an Archival Spotlight focused on legal enactments that enabled internment, incarceration, and dispossession across our study sites.

Additionally, our Archives Cluster Co-Chair, Masumi Izumi, has had a piece published in Discover Nikkei titled “ Lessons with Professor Masumi Izumi — Part 1: Family Background”. Masumi was in residence with Elysha and Jonathan and continues to work with them in her capacity as a co-chair of the Archives Cluster.

It is wonderful to see the energy that has flowed from the PWFC residency programs over the past months. We offer a huge and heartfelt congratulations to each Elysha, Jonathan, and Masumi on their impactful achievements!

Other Publications of Note:

Project Co-director Jordan Stanger-Ross published a timely piece in The Conversation titled “Concerned about foreign interference in Canada? An ‘enemy agent’ registry is not the answer”. Dr. Stanger-ross raises concerns about the direction of Canadian government policy today by referencing our not so distant pass.

Finally, Landscapes of Injustice research assistants Kaitlin Findlay, Trevor Wideman, and Yasmin Amaratunga have published an important article in the leading journal of Canadian history, the Canadian Historical Review titled ““After All Our Efforts at Good Citizenship”: Propriety, Property, and Belonging in the Dispossession of Japanese Canadians, 1940s.” please consider giving this, and all of the other important work mentioned here a read!

Congratulations to all. It is wonderful to see you the creative and intellectual work of the project beginning to bear fruit.

33

2:07 pm

09 May 2023

Eligibility: Open to artists (all forms) whose work can address the themes of our partnership. Applications from Canadian artists and from artists outside of Canada are welcome. Submit electronically to the PWFC office at (pwfc_office@uvic.ca) and should include:

• Description of the proposed artistic project (1 page)
• A project budget (1 page)
• Link to portfolio of work
• A one-page CV

The adjudication committee will consist of representatives from museums in each of the partner countries.

Applications are due June 1, 2023. Notification of receipt of the award will be provided before July 5, 2023.

Inviting applications for Scholars in Residence, Fall 2023

The Past Wrongs, Future Choices partnership is excited to offer a two to four month residency program beginning in September 2023.

Past Wrongs, Future Choices (PWFC) is a new partnership based at the University of Victoria with Co- Directors Audrey Kobayashi and Jordan Stanger-Ross. It includes museums, galleries, community organizations, and scholars across the world. Together, we’re embarking on a partnership to examine, from a global perspective, the WWII internment, incarceration, and dispossession of people of Japanese descent in allied countries across the world. What do these histories, taken together, teach us today?

Working with partners in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, and the United States, Past Wrongs, Future Choices focuses on past abrogation of civil and human rights, in order to foster political and social accountability today and for the future. We aim to provoke publics across the word to grapple with the question of what we owe to one another, especially in times of crisis.

The successful applicants will receive a $7,000 stipend, as well as offices, library access, and participation in a vibrant intellectual community at the University of Victoria. A concurrent Artists in residence program enhances the creative and intellectual environment of the residencies.

Scholars in residence are expected to advance the scholarly aims of PWFC by acting as the lead (or solo) author of a working paper that examines, from a comparative or transnational perspective, the infringements of the civil and human rights of Nikkei people in allied countries in the 1940s, or closely related topics, as conveyed in the PWFC project summary and description. At the conclusion of the residency, scholars will present their work to date to an interdisciplinary audience. We reserve first right of refusal for their written work, which may be published in the project’s working paper series and included the first PWFC book, to be submitted to McGill-Queens University Press by 2025.

Eligibility: Applicants can be scholars at any level of seniority, ranging from early career and emerging scholars to established leaders in the field. Collaborators or co-applicants on the PWFC are encouraged to apply, as are scholars interested in joining the project. Learn more about the PWFC project here.

Applications by academics and artists should be submitted electronically to Jordan Stanger-Ross (jstross@uvic.ca) and should include:

• A one-page (max) description of the proposed working paper
• Names and affiliations of all proposed collaborators, as well as brief indication of their area of expertise/contribution
• A one-page CV
• Budget, if applicable

We aim for the program to create a stimulating environment for the advancement of specific projects related to the core aims of PWFC.

Recipients are expected to be in residence at UVic for the duration of their residency. The precise dates and duration can be tailored to each scholars interests and needs, so long as they are in residence for at least two months between September and December 2023.

Applications are due June 1, 2023. Notification of receipt of the award will be provided before July 5, 2023.

31

5:13 pm

05 May 2023

28

10:25 am

18 Apr 2023

In anticipation of my event with Audrey tomorrow, I've published an article using our project title as subheadings. Be the first to find them in:

27

5:30 pm

17 Apr 2023

Apologies -- the event tomorrow is at 10 AM Pacific, Canadian time!

Jordan

26

11:32 am

13 Apr 2023

Internment in Canada: A Panel Discussion

Dear PWFC Community,

Tomorrow, at 9:30 Pacific in Canada, Sherri Kajiwara and I will present as part of a panel about the Broken Promises Exhibition (a capstone of Landscapes of Injustice), which is now showing at the Canadian Museum of Immigration, in Halifax. Some details below.

Learn more and register at: https://pier21.ca/internment-canada

Date: Friday, April 14
Time: 2:00 p.m.
Location: Online
Language: Presented in English
Cost: FREE

Can you imagine someone taking your home, your possessions, and your freedom?

Internment is a wartime peril that many immigrant communities have faced. The exhibits Broken Promises and Enemy Aliens examine the internment of Ukrainian and German Canadians in the First World War and Japanese Canadians in the Second World War. They provide a crucial look at how crisis and world conflict can have profound consequences for previously welcomed immigrants.

Join us for the opening of these two exhibitions with a virtual panel discussion featuring experts on the First World War and Japanese Canadian internment during the Second World War.

25

11:28 am

13 Apr 2023

Dear Victoria-based PWFCers:

The Past Wrongs, Future Choices partnership is seeking a motivated student to work as a Research/Office Assistant within the Project Office coordinating a major international partnership based here at UVic.

Answering to the Acting Project Manager, Anthony Auchterlonie, as well as project Co-Directors Dr. Jordan Stanger-Ross and Dr. Audrey Kobayashi, the successful candidate will be responsible for aiding the office in the setting up the project’s website, managing internal and external communications, supporting activities including scholar and artist in residence programs and a field school, and other miscellaneous tasks within the realm of Project Management. There may also be opportunities for the successful candidate to pursue projects of personal interest including but not necessarily limited to research intensive or artistic tasks as they pertain to the mandate of Past Wrongs, Future Choices. The successful candidate should be knowledgeable in the areas of website design, Adobe Suits, Microsoft Suits, and Zoom.

The position has a pay rate of $16.96 per hour. The successful candidate will be expected to work approximately 420 hours (21 hours a week) between late-April and August 31. Vacation time can be negotiated to the preference of the successful candidate. There is the potential for an extension to this contract beyond this end date.

Past Wrongs, Future Choices is a 7-year multi-sector and interdisciplinary project to integrate the historical understanding of the mistreatment of Nikkei (people of Japanese descent) during the 1940s, particularly in Australia, Brazil, Canada and the United States, and to mobilize public knowledge of that history.

Working with museum professionals, in-service teachers, archivists, and librarians, as well as partner institutions with mandates in Nikkei communities and those with broader public missions, we will catalyze research and public discussion through scholarly publications, exhibitions, archives, teacher resources and a documentary film. Learn more about our project here and here.

If you are interested in applying for this position, please send your resume including contact information for two references, and a cover letter or statement of interest, to Anthony Auchterlonie at pwfc_office@uvic.ca no later than April 21.

21

11:40 am

04 Apr 2023

Congratulations to PWFC partner Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre on the launch of two exciting projects:

Okaeri featuring 21 interviews, including of Japanese Canadian kika-nisei, exiled to Japan in 1946 before returning to Canada in the 1950s.

and

Tegami featuring beautiful photographs and the correspondence between two Japanese Canadian girls negotiating their forced displacement during the 1940s.

Mazal Tov to our friends at the NNM!

(let us know if your organizations have announcements that the team should learn about)

20

2:51 pm

26 Mar 2023

Dear PWFC Research Collective,

Please mark your calendars for:

Gender and Nikkei Migration

A Keyword Session of Past Wrongs, Future Choices

March 24, 2 pm Pacific Standard Time (more times below)

This session, led by scholars in the “Gender in Nikkei Migration” network, will explore how gender shapes Nikkei memories, experiences, and histories. We insist on the need to consider gender from a transnational – or, better, a transpacific – lens, and will discuss the approaches and theoretical frameworks that are currently guiding our thinking. 

We are taking the session as an opportunity to share the very fruitful and energising discussions that are taking place within our network. It is perhaps not a traditional ‘keyword session,’ as our goal will not be to provide any definitions, but rather to discuss how scholars in our network are taking up questions of gender – as well as desire, race, family, generation, beauty – in our individual and collective work. Some of this work is in its very earliest stages and would benefit tremendously from the expertise of the partnership. 

We look forward to thinking alongside many of you to further explore these themes.

Network Members:

Darren Aoki, University of Plymouth

Natsuko Akagawa, The University of Queensland

Benjamin DuMontier, Independent Researcher

Jennifer Noji, University of California, Los Angeles

Yukari Takai, International Research Centre for Japanese Studies

Rachel Iwaasa, Independent Researcher and Artist

Andrea Mariko Grant, University of Victoria

Additional dates and times:

18

6:58 pm

22 Feb 2023