From top left corner: print of Yosh Nakamura (July 1942); postcard from Setsuko Fuji to Joan Gillis (May 17, 1943); minute from Yosh Nakamura to Joan Gillis (July 25 1942); print of immature woman, Setsuko Fuji; and print of Yosh Nakamura, Jackie Takahashi and crony on a tractor.
UBC Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections has acquired an unusual collection of letters that yield singular discernment into a harmful effects of a Japanese Canadian internment during World War II.
The collection of 147 letters, created to donor Joan Gillis in 1942 by a organisation of immature Japanese Canadians she met while attending Queen Elizabeth Secondary School in Surrey, speak of daily life and a hurdles faced by these immature people after being systematic out of a “Security Zone” on a B.C. coast, and are filled with visit references to strident homesickness and unhappiness during being private from their homes. The writers operation in age from 13 to 18. Some were really tighten friends with Gillis, while others were infrequent acquaintances.
Laura Ishiguro, an historian of Canada and a British Empire during UBC, pronounced a letters will be an critical training apparatus during UBC, contributing to new and improved interpretations in classroom discussions about a internment of Japanese Canadians.
“Existing narratives around a internment tend to concentration on Japanese Canadian people in siege from others, or on a ideas and actions of vital supervision figures, with a Japanese Canadian village rendered mostly faceless victims of tragedy,” pronounced Ishiguro. “With these letters, my students and we could try a opposite war-time story from a viewpoint of immature people.”
Henry Yu, a highbrow in a UBC story department, pronounced a letters yield a window into a lives of propagandize children going by a dire time in B.C.’s history.
“One of a many effective ways for people to know a harmful effects of a influential dismissal of over approximately 23,000 Japanese Canadians in 1942 and their successive outcast by a sale of their skill and security is not in a epitome numbers that magnitude their financial detriment or a numbers of people dispossessed and exiled, though in a singular and tender moments when we can see a effects by a eyes of those who suffered them,” pronounced Yu. “Letters such as those sent to Ms. Gillis from propagandize friends are so absolute precisely since of a authentic existence that they demonstrate of propagandize children’s knowledge of a trauma, common with a devoted friend.”
Letter from Masao Ujiye to Joan Gillis, 9 Oct 1943.
UBC Library is gratified to be means to supplement this singular merger to a strong Japanese Canadian Research collection that includes materials on business and commerce, mining, farming, fishing, forestry, eremite activities, education, community, reminiscences and biographies in further to materials on a Japanese Canadian evacuation.
“These letters yield a singular and critical viewpoint on a Japanese-Canadian internment from a voices of youth,” pronounced Krisztina Laszlo, archivist during Rare Books and Special Collections during UBC Library. “We’re anxious that a letters are entrance to RBSC and that UBC faculty, students and a village will be means to use them for investigate and teaching. It’s a smashing apparatus and we’re unapproachable to act as their caretaker.”
The letters, that make adult approximately 300-350 pages, can be noticed in chairman by visiting Rare Book and Special Collections or by booking a tour.
