Connecting Our Global Community: Panel Discussion and Book Talk

Date: July 12, 2025

Time: 2:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.

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The Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre (NNMCC), Past Wrongs, Future Choices, JANM on the Go, and Discover Nikkei are proud to present this afternoon of programming on Japanese Canadian history and remembrance. Join us in Burnaby, British Columbia, for a book talk, reception, and panel discussion. For those outside of British Columbia, the panel discussion will be live-streamed via Zoom.

FREE event, but registration is required for in-person and virtual attendance.

In-person registration

Panel discussion virtual registration

Schedule of Events

Book Talk—The Japanese Canadian Movement: Losses and Gains in Translation

2:30 p.m. – 3:45 p.m.

Join scholars Masumi Izumi of Doshisha University and Emily Anderson of the Japanese American National Museum for a discussion about telling Japanese Canadian history on both sides of the Pacific. As the two work to translate into English Izumi’s sweeping history of Japanese Canadian experience—the most exhaustive study in this area to date—into English, they encounter challenges of language and of vastly different audiences. What is gained, and what lost, in translation?

Light Reception

4 p.m. – 5 p.m.

Enjoy light refreshments and visit a pop-up exhibition featuring Past Wrongs, Future Choices artists. Participants are also encouraged to explore the museum.

Panel Discussion—Routes of Remembrance: A discussion of the Tomoshibi 灯 Journey Bus Tour to Sites of Japanese Canadian Confinement

5 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. PDT

For more than twenty years, the Nikkei National Museum’s Tomoshibi 灯 Journey Bus Tour has travelled to sites of Japanese Canadian incarceration in British Columbia. On these annual trips, people who lived through the ordeal of the 1940s, their descendants, and members of the wider public have learned a history of Canadian injustice and community resilience in the places where incarceration happened.

In recent years, the tour has been enhanced through partnership with Past Wrongs, Future Choices, which invites students, teachers from across Canada, and international educators to join the tour as part of a course at the University of Victoria. Our panel explores what participants have learned in these experiences of history. Why return to places of past harm and trauma?

Join us for a discussion among tour participants from Australia, Canada, and the United States, each reflecting on what the experience taught them, how the history of uprooting in Canada is connected with the injustices suffered by Nikkei civilians across the globe in the 1940s, and what this learning can offer us today.

This JANM on the Go program is sponsored by the Past Wrongs, Future Choices partnership, the Nikkei National Museum, and Discover Nikkei. Major funding for Discover Nikkei is provided by The Nippon Foundation.

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