Before starting Emerging Trends and Topics in Curriculum Studies, I was preparing for my school year teaching English First Peoples.  As a part of this preparation, I was re-reading one of my favourite authors, Richard Wagamese.  The novel, Indian Horse, tells the story of a boy ripped from his family and put into Residential School.  He describes the school as, “St. Germ’s scraped away at us, leaving holes in our beings.  I could never understand how the god they proclaimed was watching over us could turn his head and ignore such cruelty and suffering” (Wagamese, 2012, p. 52).  Wagemese describes a sense of loss of identity, and the confusion with mistreatment, cruelty and racism.  

As I make my way through the assigned readings and videos, I can feel the same sense of loss that Wagamese describes, in the stories of the Japanese Canadians.  The same themes of loss of identity, and confusion through the mistreatment of Indigenous and Japanese peoples in our Canadian history.

Aoki describes his experiences with this identity-confusion through a difficulty understanding what it means to be Japanese-Canadian.  When he proclaims he is Canadian and identifies as such, he is confused by the officer’s response.  He does not see himself or his history represented as he goes through school, “That school experience of leaving my ethnic colleagues behind in Grade One was my first “learning” experience of social division by ethnicity—an example of a hidden curriculum at work” (Pinar & Irwin, 2004, p. 8).  He is not provided clarity around his history and culture.  

Reflecting on this as a teacher, it reminds me that it is our responsibility to help students form a sense of identity in school.  To help them identify their roots, and to hear stories of others to help them gain perspective.

I was twenty-two years old when I first learned about residential schools and Indigenous history in Canada.  Today, I’m thirty-eight years old and just learning about the level of cultural atrocity that occurred for Japanese Canadians in our history.  I did not know that we had the same level of segregation in our history that the African American’s faced in America.  As Aoki obtains a teaching job in Calgary and remembers the segregation issue he faced, “Here, I faced an unanticipated problem—a teacher problem for a Japanese Canadian, that of “where to live?” Calgary’s bylaws forbade residence of any Japanese Canadian within the confines of Calgary city proper” (Pinar & Irwin, 2004, p. 8).  Again, to compare, the Indigenous peoples of Canada also faced segregation to Reserves, where they too, were given curfews.  My comparison is not meant to negate either struggle, rather to encapsulate my understanding of these experiences.

These quotes left a strong impact on me, and I have to rewrite them to share the message of the author:

“A British Columbia-born Japanese Canadian in Japan? In Japan I felt that as a Japanese Canadian, I was both Japanese and non-Japanese. I felt I was both insider and outsider, “in” yet not fully in, “out” yet not fully out” (Pinar & Irwin, 2004, p. 3).

“And as a Japanese Canadian, I occasionally felt my humanness crushed or disturbed.”(Pinar & Irwin, 2004, p. 3).

After a horrible experience of racism, Aoki reflects, “I don’t remember anything of the happenings at the teachers’ convention but I do have a strong indelible memory of that ten-second episode at the Marquis” (Pinar & Irwin, 2004, p. 10).

This moment reminds me of the article “Currere” by Pinar we just read, that students need experiences in learning, and connection, not just material that they will forget.  One of my favourite teaching quotes is, “students may not remember what you taught them, but they will remember how you made them feel.”  He vividly remembers the way he was spoken to, how he was treated, and how he was singled out.  He doesn’t remember his classes that day.  This would be a traumatizing experience for someone searching for answers of his culture and to find himself.

Although difficult to read, I loved this piece of writing.  It was poetic and expressed sadness, loss, discovery, and some clarity in the end with his journey towards self-discovery and defining himself as a Japanese Canadian.  I love the ending, as he creates this clarity in his life through his teaching and educating.  He participates with others, “in its very construction” of his lived experiences to come closer to who he feels he is.   Using the metaphors created by a book “Bushido: The Soul of Japan”, he creates possibilities for himself using the relationship between the sakura and the rose.    First, he could see himself in an “either-or” way, making a choice to define himself as one or the other.  He feels this would “cripple” him.  Second, he offers a simultaneous existence, a melting-pot of the two flowers, or his two identities.  He also disregards this approach and views it as, “a metaphor borrowed from another world.”  Lastly, he creates this idea of the two existing as they are, in view, simultaneously, though holding their uniqueness.

After watching “Japanese Internment WW2,”  “Hastings Park: Mary Kitagawa” and “A Degree of Justice, Japanese Canadian UBC Students of 1942”, I’m reflecting that I taught about Japanese internment camps this year in my grade 8 socials class but hadn’t considered it for my English classes next year until watching these documentaries and listening to the stories they told.  That’s a huge oversight, this is part of our history.

I’m left with these final sentiments:

What does it mean to be Canadian?  Do I see my privilege?  Do I really see it?  It inspires me to continue to impart wisdom of cultural history for my students to see different perspectives and have empathy, understanding, and clarity.

The reparations of $20,000 each reminds me of the money given to Indigenous Canadians after their entire culture was demolished.  Why do we think money serves a purpose here?  

And I’m left with one final question: Are there acts of reconciliation for the Japanese Internment Camps?

Reference List:

Legion Magazine (Director). (2016, December 7). Japanese Canadian Internment | Narrated by David Suzuki. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8TQTuMqM9g

       Pinar, W. F., & Irwin, R. L. (2004). Reflections of a Japanese Canadian teacher experiencing         ethnicity 1 (1979). In W. F. Pinar & R. L. Irwin (Eds.), *Curriculum in a new key* (1st ed., pp. 16). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410611390