Oral Histories

The oral histories collections includes 95 interviews of Japanese Canadians as well as the perspectives and memories of bystanders and witnesses. Led by Pamela Sugiman, LOI oral hsitorians conducted over a hundred interviews to provide personal stories and human emotion that supplement the archival record. Thanks to the generous participation of those interviewed, the LOI oral history project offers a window into the reverberations of this history across multiple Japanese-Canadian generations. The voices of the Nisei generation (second-generation Japanese Canadians), who are most represented in the LOI-conducted interviews, are joined by a handful of interviews of Issei (first-generation Japanese Canadians) conducted in the 1970s, and housed at the BC Archives, to allow for further explorations of the generational impacts of the forced uprooting, incarceration, and loss of property. Using these incredible resources, Kaitlin Findlay, Heather Read, and Jordan Stanger-Ross offer a scholarly discussion on these generational impacts in “Remembering Acts of Ownership,” (Landscapes of Injustice, 2020) that is a fruitful start to a long conversation Canadians can have about collective and personal remembering, responsibility, and justice.