Leader of Japanese Canadian redress effort gives reading

By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on September 28, 2024.

Herald photo by Al Beeber Art Miki, who led efforts to get redress from the federal government for the internship of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War speaks at the Bunka Centre Friday. Miki was giving a reading of his memoir last night at Nikka Yuko's Golden Maple Reception.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

A man who led negotiations to have a redress settlement for Japanese Canadians who were displaced and interned in the Second World War was in Lethbridge Friday launching his new memoir and acting as special guest presenter for the Nikka Yuko Japanese Garden’s Golden Maple Reception.

During the reception Art Miki of Winnipeg gave a reading of his book “Gaman – Perseverance: Japanese Canadians Journey to Justice.”

Miki, who was born in British Columbia in 1936, was among thousands of Japanese Canadians displaced from that province and interned during the Second World War. At the age of five, he and his family were forced out of their fruit farm near Vancouver and resettled to a one-room house in St. Agathe, Manitoba where the family worked on a sugar beet farm.

Miki was named president of the National Association of Japanese Canadians in 1984 and under his leadership that organization began seeking a formal apology from the federal government and compensation for property that had been confiscated.

He also served as director of the Japanese Canadian Redress Foundation that was established to administer the $12 million fund that was part of the settlement reached with the federal government. In 1991, he was named to the Order of Canada.

On Friday at the Bunka Centre on the grounds of the Nikka Yuko Gardens, the retired educator spoke about the efforts to seek compensation and the fears some Japanese Canadians had about potential retribution.

Lethbridge at one time “was a hot bed for many of the people who were removed, especially for the sugar beet farms in this area so there’s quite a history of Japanese Canadians here,” said Miki.

That history is similar to his own so he can relate to the experiences of Japanese Canadians here, he said.

“I think it’s good to share some of our stories with different people, especially the younger people who might not remember or know about the past. I think that’s one of our obligations – it’s really to ensure that people don’t forget” what happened to Japanese Canadians, Miki said.

When the redress campaign started, many Japanese Canadians were reluctant to support the initiative “because they were afraid that by bringing the issue back up to the table, there would be racism directed to us. Especially when you’re talking about compensation there was fear there was going to be backlash from other Canadians and so there was a real reluctance to even support it,” he said.

There was also a reluctance to speak about the past but Miki knows from his experiences talking to Jewish people who experienced the Holocaust that the same thing exists in their communities and others where people have gone through the same kind of trauma.

“It’s not surprising they didn’t want to share, especially to not their children know because I think they were humiliated about what happened,” added Miki.

The redress settlement opened discussion with stories coming out publicly about the resettlements. As Canadians learned more about what happened, members of the community were more apt to talk about what happened to them.

“We found that there’s been quite a transition that’s taken place where people are more open to talk about what happened to them and share it with their children. That’s part of the healing process, to be able to accept what happened and to move ahead,” added Miki.

The settlement was an important recognition of human rights, he said. Those pushing for redress relied on a precedent in the U.S. with an American congressional committee report that indicated Japanese Americans who were put in camps should receive $20,000 each.

The Canadian government was reluctant to provide individual compensation because they were told by legal advisors they were opening themselves up to other lawsuits, Miki said.

“There was a real reluctance to move on it,” said Miki, citing Prime Minister Brian Mulroney for taking the initiative to make the redress move ahead. Mulroney was supported by Quebec ally Lucien Bouchard who was a minister in Mulroney’s cabinet for two years before founding and leading the Bloc Quebecois.

A march on Parliament Hill in April 1988 became a national story and shortly after Mulroney said the government was ready to open discussions redress and make individual compensation part of those discussions.

Secret meetings were held in Ottawa and Montreal in August of 1988 and in September the official announcement was made, he recalled.

“At the time we made the agreement, only four people knew about in the government – the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister of Multiculturalism and Lucien Bouchard, who was the Secretary of State. Those were the only four people who knew we had reached an agreement,” said Miki whose group was asked by Mulroney to not release the news until an announcement was made in the House of Commons.

“Even though we knew for a whole month that this was coming about, nobody in our community knew so when they heard the announcement, it was a shock to our community,” recalled Miki.

Mulroney told Miki he had a hard time convincing his caucus it was the right thing to do, he said.

But racism hasn’t ended, Miki said.

“Things haven’t changed that much, there’s a lot of racism, differences, wars and within our own country, too, there’s some divisions taking place and we still have to remind people what can happen when things get out of hand. In times of crisis, peoples’ rights are taken away and we have to be careful that we protect them. That’s part of the role of our national organization is to be on top of those things” and speak out, using their experience as a reminder of what happened in the past, he added.

Professor Carly Adams of the University of Lethbridge who directs the Centre of Oral History and Tradition there and is co-leader of the Nikkei Memory Capture Project at the Bunka Centre with Darren Aoki – who now teaches at the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom – said since the Bunka Centre first opened in 2022, efforts have been made to have the voices of Japanese Canadians heard within the centre.

“The centre has become a custodian of history,” said Adams. And efforts have been made to interview as many people as possible and those voices represented in different exhibits at the garden calling it an amazing thing to have Miki’s voice on the wall at the centre.

Associate professor of history Gideon Fujihara of the U of L and director on the board for the Lethbridge and District Japanese Garden Society, whose family immigrated to southern Alberta in the late 1970s, said he is a “real beneficiary of the work that Dr. Miki and other leaders have done.” His family was sponsored by a family – the Yamashitas – farmers who had been interned themselves.

“It’s a real lesson of what they fought for.” About 4,000 people in Lethbridge are of Japanese heritage and many are descendants of people who had their citizenship rights denied during the Second Word War, he added.