On Saturday, September 27, 2-3 pm, author Joy Kogawa will return to her childhood house at 1450 West 64th Avenue. She will meet with friends, teachers, fellow writers, and interested readers of her work. She will share her memories and read from her award-winning novel, Obasan. Since its publication in 1981, Obasan has become one of the most endearing novels of our time. Countless readers were first introduced to the wartime mass uprooting and internment of Japanese Canadians through the eyes of its central character, Naomi Nakane. As Naomi invokes her personal memory of this catastrophic event, she takes readers back to her childhood in the Marpole area of Vancouver - and back to 1450 West 64th Avenue in 1942. Then six years old, she recalls the moments when her tightly knit family life was violated and then torn apart by the actions of the Canadian government.

While recently visiting Vancouver, sixty-one years later, Kogawa came across the very house that she remembered in her novel - still close to its original form inside and out. The house is empty and up for sale. Kogawa was especially struck by the cherry tree in the back yard, propped up and bandaged, yet still very much alive. As she writes after being invited to return to West 64th Avenue: "I always always wanted to go back home. It was such a splendid house in my mind, a castle, compared to everything afterwards. The old old cherry tree is still there in the back yard - terribly wounded and weeping sap - but miraculously alive." West Coast Line and the Japanese Canadian Studies Society, with the assistance of Joy Kogawa's friend, Roy Miki, are pleased to sponsor a literary event to commemorate Kogawa's return to this historically important site. The media is especially invited to attend this unique literary and cultural event in Vancouver. -- West Coast Line, 2003