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Curator of Shasin: Japanese Photography to 1942, a book based on the Japanese Canadian National Museum's touring exhibition of the same name containing rare photographs and insights into the work of Japanese Canadian studio photographers in Cumberland, Vancouver and New Westminster.
In 2021, Thomson wrote a memoir that combined her own writing with translated entries from her late mother's journal. It is described by her publisher as: "A vital memoir by two Japanese Canadian women reflecting on their family history, cultural heritage, generational trauma, and the meaning of home."
BOOKS
Chiru Sakura -- Falling Cherry Blossoms: A Mother & Daughter’s Journey through Racism, Internment and Oppression (Caitlin 2021) $24.95 978-1-77386-041-1
[BCBW 2021]
Review of the author's work by BC Studies:
Shashin: Japanese Canadian Photography to 1942
+++
Chiru Sakura — Falling Cherry Blossoms A Mother & Daughter’s Journey through Racism, Internment and Oppression by Grace Eiko Thomson (Caitlin $24.95)
Review by Caroline Woodward
[BCBW 2021]
From 1993—2001, my husband and I ran the Motherlode Bookstore in New Denver, B.C. where we had, amidst signs designating the usual books about woodworking, gardening, and fiction, one sign with these three words: issei nisei sansei. In the early ’90s, those shelves contained books like Ken Adachi’s groundbreaking non-fiction title, The Enemy That Never Was, Joy Kogawa’s luminous novels and one of her books for children, Barry Broadfoot’s oral history, Years of Sorrow, Years of Shame, post-modern poetry volumes by Roy Miki and Gerry Shikatani, and several general titles about the history of the Slocan Valley where there were ten internment camps for Japanese-Canadian citizens in 1942.
Today, those shelves would be packed with many more Canadian books, from the sansei/third generation in particular. And it would contain many copies of Chiru Sakura—Falling Cherry Blossoms: A Mother & Daughter’s Journey through Racism, Internment and Oppression, at once a conversation between issei/first and nisei/second generation immigrants to Canada, a decades-long argument between mother and daughter, and a close-up, personal history of dreams shattered and self-worth battered by the Canadian government’s decision to treat 22,000 citizens as “enemy aliens.”
In the “orchard half” of New Denver in 1993, once one of B.C.’s WW2 internment camps, work was nearing completion on the Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre, given National Historic Monument status in 2007.
In the summer of 1994, the film cast and crew for The War Between Us directed by Anne Wheeler, descended on bucolic New Denver and provided work for carpenters, horse wranglers, and local professional and amateur actors including a number of former Canadian-Japanese internees and their descendants who had stayed when the war ended. Other B.C. internment camp residents had been ordered to go “east of the Rockies or be sent back (sic) to Japan” as the government didn’t want them staying in the province. But New Denver was the only internment site to which this rule did not apply and the cherry trees in the orchard and many beloved and highly esteemed former internees blossomed after the harsh war years.
Fate and family pressure had other plans for Grace Eiko Thomson (whose maiden name was Nishikihama) and her family, who had thrived in the lively, pre-war Powell Street neighbourhood of Vancouver. First, they were sent to Minto City, a mostly-abandoned gold mining town near Lillooet, for three years. Then they were persuaded to go east to Manitoba, to work on farms.
Culture shock does not begin to describe it.
Grace’s mother, Sawae Nishikihama wanted her family to know about this life, including being faced with the prospect of living in a barn during Manitoban winters. She began writing her memoirs at the age of 84. Her second of five children, Grace, was by then a nationally respected curator of art exhibits, a gallery director, a leader of Japanese Canadian associations and mother of two, married to a Scot. She had also been taught the Japanese language and script from an early age so she began translating her mother’s memoirs.
Grace found herself adding her own reflections in response, from her very different perspective as a child enduring racism from all quarters, molestation by older white men, and recalling happier times as well, with kindnesses shown to the family by other Canadians, most notably Jewish friends from Winnipeg.
Since her older sister had been sent to Japan to live with a grandmother long beforehand, Grace inherited a list of daily chores from the age of ten onward. These included looking after her two younger brothers and one sister and making simple meals for the family.
Both parents worked constantly to support their family on inadequate wages and dealt with an older family member who was, by my reading, constantly taking financial advantage of “third brother’s family” through coercive methods.
Sawae was a gently raised and educated woman when she left Japan to marry her handsome, hardworking fiancé, by then a naturalized Canadian, in 1930. He worked at every manual labour and service job that came his way while she became a skilled dressmaker. It is one of the inevitable conflicts in this bittersweet book that her teenage daughter, Grace, treasured the factory-made sweaters and neck scarves given to her by a friend more than the exquisite ball gowns made by her mother.
Grace wanted the Hit Parade tunes to sing along with while Sawae recalled Ikebana floral arrangement lessons.
A timid but bright and lovely little girl, Eiko (Grace) came to demand her first name be anglicized to Grace because an ignorant teacher made a point of mangling her two-syllable Japanese name every time he had to utter it publicly.
This world is still full of injustices. Stories like these, painful and shameful and hopeful, too, help us understand the cost to our humanity of racist government policies. Throughout, Grace Eiko Thomson returns to her mother’s teachings of hope and resilience symbolized in the cherry blossoms around what was once their home in Vancouver. 9781773860411
Recently retired as a lighthouse keeper on Lennard Island, Caroline Woodward lives and writes from somewhere on the road in a mighty BigFoot motorhome. Eventually she’ll return to New Denver.
In 2021, Thomson wrote a memoir that combined her own writing with translated entries from her late mother's journal. It is described by her publisher as: "A vital memoir by two Japanese Canadian women reflecting on their family history, cultural heritage, generational trauma, and the meaning of home."
BOOKS
Chiru Sakura -- Falling Cherry Blossoms: A Mother & Daughter’s Journey through Racism, Internment and Oppression (Caitlin 2021) $24.95 978-1-77386-041-1
[BCBW 2021]
Review of the author's work by BC Studies:
Shashin: Japanese Canadian Photography to 1942
+++
Chiru Sakura — Falling Cherry Blossoms A Mother & Daughter’s Journey through Racism, Internment and Oppression by Grace Eiko Thomson (Caitlin $24.95)
Review by Caroline Woodward
[BCBW 2021]
From 1993—2001, my husband and I ran the Motherlode Bookstore in New Denver, B.C. where we had, amidst signs designating the usual books about woodworking, gardening, and fiction, one sign with these three words: issei nisei sansei. In the early ’90s, those shelves contained books like Ken Adachi’s groundbreaking non-fiction title, The Enemy That Never Was, Joy Kogawa’s luminous novels and one of her books for children, Barry Broadfoot’s oral history, Years of Sorrow, Years of Shame, post-modern poetry volumes by Roy Miki and Gerry Shikatani, and several general titles about the history of the Slocan Valley where there were ten internment camps for Japanese-Canadian citizens in 1942.
Today, those shelves would be packed with many more Canadian books, from the sansei/third generation in particular. And it would contain many copies of Chiru Sakura—Falling Cherry Blossoms: A Mother & Daughter’s Journey through Racism, Internment and Oppression, at once a conversation between issei/first and nisei/second generation immigrants to Canada, a decades-long argument between mother and daughter, and a close-up, personal history of dreams shattered and self-worth battered by the Canadian government’s decision to treat 22,000 citizens as “enemy aliens.”
In the “orchard half” of New Denver in 1993, once one of B.C.’s WW2 internment camps, work was nearing completion on the Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre, given National Historic Monument status in 2007.
In the summer of 1994, the film cast and crew for The War Between Us directed by Anne Wheeler, descended on bucolic New Denver and provided work for carpenters, horse wranglers, and local professional and amateur actors including a number of former Canadian-Japanese internees and their descendants who had stayed when the war ended. Other B.C. internment camp residents had been ordered to go “east of the Rockies or be sent back (sic) to Japan” as the government didn’t want them staying in the province. But New Denver was the only internment site to which this rule did not apply and the cherry trees in the orchard and many beloved and highly esteemed former internees blossomed after the harsh war years.
Fate and family pressure had other plans for Grace Eiko Thomson (whose maiden name was Nishikihama) and her family, who had thrived in the lively, pre-war Powell Street neighbourhood of Vancouver. First, they were sent to Minto City, a mostly-abandoned gold mining town near Lillooet, for three years. Then they were persuaded to go east to Manitoba, to work on farms.
Culture shock does not begin to describe it.
Grace’s mother, Sawae Nishikihama wanted her family to know about this life, including being faced with the prospect of living in a barn during Manitoban winters. She began writing her memoirs at the age of 84. Her second of five children, Grace, was by then a nationally respected curator of art exhibits, a gallery director, a leader of Japanese Canadian associations and mother of two, married to a Scot. She had also been taught the Japanese language and script from an early age so she began translating her mother’s memoirs.
Grace found herself adding her own reflections in response, from her very different perspective as a child enduring racism from all quarters, molestation by older white men, and recalling happier times as well, with kindnesses shown to the family by other Canadians, most notably Jewish friends from Winnipeg.
Since her older sister had been sent to Japan to live with a grandmother long beforehand, Grace inherited a list of daily chores from the age of ten onward. These included looking after her two younger brothers and one sister and making simple meals for the family.
Both parents worked constantly to support their family on inadequate wages and dealt with an older family member who was, by my reading, constantly taking financial advantage of “third brother’s family” through coercive methods.
Sawae was a gently raised and educated woman when she left Japan to marry her handsome, hardworking fiancé, by then a naturalized Canadian, in 1930. He worked at every manual labour and service job that came his way while she became a skilled dressmaker. It is one of the inevitable conflicts in this bittersweet book that her teenage daughter, Grace, treasured the factory-made sweaters and neck scarves given to her by a friend more than the exquisite ball gowns made by her mother.
Grace wanted the Hit Parade tunes to sing along with while Sawae recalled Ikebana floral arrangement lessons.
A timid but bright and lovely little girl, Eiko (Grace) came to demand her first name be anglicized to Grace because an ignorant teacher made a point of mangling her two-syllable Japanese name every time he had to utter it publicly.
This world is still full of injustices. Stories like these, painful and shameful and hopeful, too, help us understand the cost to our humanity of racist government policies. Throughout, Grace Eiko Thomson returns to her mother’s teachings of hope and resilience symbolized in the cherry blossoms around what was once their home in Vancouver. 9781773860411
Recently retired as a lighthouse keeper on Lennard Island, Caroline Woodward lives and writes from somewhere on the road in a mighty BigFoot motorhome. Eventually she’ll return to New Denver.
