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https://www.discovernikkei.org/en/journal/2025/1/19/to-grace-1/

To Grace, With Love and Gratitude—Part 1

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The passing of Grace Eiko Thomson (née Nishikihama), 90, on July 11, 2024 came as a shock to the entire Japanese Canadian (JC) community, particularly amongst our artists.

Grace was a revered Nisei artist, curator, writer, community advocate and, perhaps, most importantly to many, a dear friend: she was a generational leader who recognized the importance of listening to and supporting the JC artists, always urging the JC community onward, evolving, towards something that could be better. Grace, more than anybody, perhaps, knew that it was through the arts, that magical concoction, that important aspects of the JC community and culture could be resuscitated. 

Grace’s determined fight to get the Nikkei National Museum (NNM) to change its name back to the original Japanese Canadian Museum, which honours who we are, taught me a lot about who she was.

While the NNM chose to be silent on the topic of naming rights, in 2021, you said:

“A Japanese Canadian (not Nikkei, a word which does not interpret our history) museum is especially important today to speak clearly through the various historic documents held in its Archive, especially on issues of racism, which is a major topic being raised at this time. We have ample information to speak from in our archival collections.

“I am not dismissing new immigrants. In fact, they are adding to Canadian culture and history, making things more interesting, just as those coming from other parts of the world are doing to the development of Canada’s history and culture. A Japanese Canadian museum’s mandate focuses on the development and preservation of Japanese Canadian history and culture, changing daily with new immigrants joining, also through new generations. What they bring should also in time become a topic for a museum exhibition: that is, their contributions to the development of Canada’s history.

“As I say, the first time I heard the word Nikkei was when the Nikkei Place opened in Burnaby. In analyzing the word, I find it to mean ‘Nik’ (Japanese) and ‘kei’ (lineage), that is, persons of Japanese ancestry. So it has no connection to those of us, like me, a Nisei, a second generation Japanese Canadian, born and raised in Canada. It is to be remembered that at one time, our descriptive adjective was hyphenated: Japanese-Canadian. Since the Redress, we (largely the younger Nisei and Sansei, second and third generation) dropped the hyphen to become, simply, Japanese Canadian, using the word ‘Japanese’ as a descriptive adjective, something European Canadians have no need for, since ‘white’ is accepted.

“We, today, are being called ‘people of colour’ (name I have not yet accepted as again dividing, not working to unite us as human beings) by some, and are often asked largely by racist others, ‘where do you come from?’ To which I have come to respond ‘I am a Canadian, born in Canada’ and add, ‘how about you, where do you come from?’ And when yelled at to ‘go back where you come from,” I respond “and where do you come from?’ As we all know, and acknowledge, we (not just Japanese Canadians) are living on traditional, unceded, territories.

“I never heard my parents use the word ‘Nikkei.’ In fact they called themselves ‘nihonjin’ (Japanese) until they achieved citizenship, and those of us, born to immigrant parents, like myself, we were from birth referred to as  ‘Nisei,’ second generation, the Japanese word also describing our ancestry,” said the fearless octogenarian.1

Grace always sought the truth. Preserving Japanese Canadian history as it really was was not negotiable. Since Redress, our community seems to have lost its way. Grace dared to speak up whenever need be. Being “Japanese Canadian” mattered to her. After generations of enduring racist epithets, slurs and propaganda, it meant a lot, especially the “CANADIAN.” That should have been untouchable. I take certain pride in calling myself Japanese Canadian. Plain and simple. Why the change? We're still waiting for a response.

“Japanese Canadian” encapsulates the truth of who I am—the child of Nisei parents and Issei grandparents who lost everything during WWII simply because they were Japanese Canadians, not Nikkei. It was 22,000 Japanese Canadians, not Nikkei, who were labelled “Enemy Aliens” during World War II and thrown into internment and POW camps. It was JCs who fought and died in two world wars, the Korean War, then who struggled in the fight for justice in post-WWII, including the Bird Commission.

Also, lest we forget also that it was Art and Roy Miki (1942-2024), Grace’s brothers-in-law, both Japanese Canadian educators, who led the fight for Redress in 1988. She had a pretty good idea of what would be lost when “our” national museum was renamed. 

* * * * *

Grace was born at the Japanese Fisherman’s Hospital in Steveston, BC, on October 15, 1933. The family settled in Vancouver’s Paueru-gai/Japantown at 522 Powell St., and, later, 510 Alexander St. Her father, Torasaburo Nishikihama (Taguchi) worked in the offices of the Codfish Cooperative Sales Society that was founded by white, Indigenous and Japanese immigrant fishers. He had arrived in Canada in 1921 (age 19) from Mio-mura, now part of Mihama, Hidaka District in Wakayama-ken. Thousands from that village immigrated to Canada, many eventually settling in the fishing village of Steveston, BC. 

Torasaburo later married Sawae Yamamoto, who Grace writes about in her memoir Chiruku Sakura: Falling Cherry Blossoms (2021, Caitland Press). Grace was the second-oldest of five siblings: Kikuko, Toyoaki, Kenji and Keiko, her only surviving sibling. 

With the onset of World War II, 22,000 innocent Japanese Canadians were rounded up and removed from BC’s 100 Mile Exclusion zone and put into internment and POW camps. Her family was “relocated” to the “self-supporting” camp in Minto, BC, where they were held captive until 1945. After their release, the Nishikihama family arrived in Middlechurch, Manitoba, where they first lived in a barn. They moved on to Whitemouth, then, finally, Winnipeg, in 1950.

Soon after leaving school she took on office work to help support her family, quickly rising through the ranks of the “steno pool” to become a valued personal secretary/assistant in business (Anthes Foundry, UGG) and law (Piblado and Hoskins, Tupper and Adams). She married Alistair Thomson in 1959 and had two sons: teacher David (Japan) and Michael, a Court of Queen’s Bench judge in Winnipeg.

She attended the University of Manitoba (1973-1977) as a mature student (BFA with honours), and later studied under Griselda Pollock at the University of Leeds, England (M.Soc. History Art; 1990 to 1991), which began her career in Manitoba (U of M), Saskatchewan and British Columbia (Burnaby Art Gallery); with the Sanavik Inuit Cooperative in Nunavut; and as inaugural curator and director of the Japanese Canadian National Museum (JCNM). She was especially proud of the JCNM exhibition Leveling the Playing Field: Legacy of Vancouver’s Asahi Baseball Team, and the role she played in developing the Japanese Canadian gallery at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (Winnipeg). 

She served the JC community as the first female president of the Manitoba Japanese Canadian Cultural Association (1955); president of the National Association of Japanese Canadians (2008) and executive member (2005 to 2010); activist and advocate for justice for: Chinese head tax, Hogan’s Alley displacement, Komagata Maru incident, the Downtown Eastside, the Musqueam Sacred Circle Society, and BC Indigenous communities and residential school survivors. As noted in the afterward to Chiru Sakura, “Grace’s education focussed on her need to overcome memories of racism and identity issues, through investigation of her cultural roots and through art.”

I remember the last time that I met Grace. It was during the Powell Street Festival in 2019. Over the phone, I expressed some concern about her taking public transit to meet up but she was not to be deterred, even arriving at the Fire Hall Theatre before me.

Grace once told me:

“I believe art is about finding one’s place, the journey not limited by one’s own history, but about expanding one’s thoughts through sharing with others. It is, in my opinion, solely about living. Living and doing without necessarily having to consciously interpret, define, or choose.”

Thank you for being a dear mentor and friend.

Domo arigato gozaimashita and gokurosama deshita.

With love and appreciation, 

Norm

PS: I’m planning to visit Miomura in the near future: I know that you’d have gotten a kick out of that…. We’ve got it from here.
       

“Inspiration and iconoclast”

Reflection by Susanne Tabata, CEO of Japanese Canadian Legacies, documentarian, digital media creator, Vancouver

Grace was an iconoclast in the JC Community.  She was the first elder I witnessed who was able to articulate a complex loss and rediscovery of her identity after a lifetime of working in art.  As the first Curator of the Japanese Canadian National Museum, she admittedly was working with her own complex relationship with the injustices her family suffered, while at the same time trying to break through the invisible barriers of misogyny and cronyism, whether real or felt. Grace always stood her ground, even if it cost her the support and the protection of a strong sector of the JC business community.  

Grace has inspired generations of Japanese Canadians, especially those who feel marginalized, to have the courage and permission to dream, advocate, and laugh. I respect her work with the Survivors Totem Pole and the Sacred Circle Society and the advocacy work she did in the downtown Eastside.   

When Grace was moving back to Winnipeg, over 100 strong community activists and artists celebrated with her in song and verse. And we look forward to doing this again in the near future.

Grace inspired me to do the work at the NAJC with BC Redress, and ultimately with the Japanese Canadian Legacies Society.

“An Inspiring Sempai”

Reflection by Masumi Izumi, Professor at Doshisha University, Kyoto

Grace was born to change the world. And change she did.

I met her after she contacted me through the Mikis in Winnipeg because I was doing research on Japanese Canadian Redress. I interviewed her for her life history. Grace was a Nisei daughter who was uprooted with her Issei parents. She had to mature very early because she had to serve as an interpreter between her mother and the Canadian sugar beet farmer who employed her family in Manitoba during the war. Later she became a curator at art galleries and museums. She tried to lift up the oppressed or silenced people by displaying their art. For her, art was political.

I spent several days with Grace in the fall of 2014 when the movie The Vancouver Asahi was shown at the Vancouver Film Festival. She invited me to tag along with her to a closed dinner with the movie’s producer, director and the main actors, Kazuya Kamenashi and Satoshi Tsumabuki. Lucky me! While I was overjoyed to be in the same room with the handsome movie actors, Grace talked to everyone about how important it was to have voting rights. She was always serious and kind, firm and inclusive, sharp and embracing. She was an inspiring Sempai activist for me. She always will be.

Read Part 2

Note

1. Norm Masaji Ibuki, “Hey, Did You Call Me a Nikkei?!,” (Discover Nikkei, February 3, 2021)

Learn more about Grace in the five-part story “The Remarkable Life and Times of Grace Eiko Thomson.”

© 2025 Norm Ibuki

activism artists authors generations Grace Eiko Thomson Japanese Canadians Nisei social action writers
About the Author

Writer Norm Masaji Ibuki lives in Oakville, Ontario. He has written extensively about the Canadian Nikkei community since the early 1990s. He wrote a monthly series of articles (1995-2004) for the Nikkei Voice newspaper (Toronto) which chronicled his experiences while in Sendai, Japan. Norm now teaches elementary school and continues to write for various publications. 

Updated August 2014

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