“Ensuring history is remembered”
Reflection by Lorene Oikawa, Past President, National Association of Japanese Canadian, Vancouver
When Grace lived in Vancouver we would meet up for lunch and conversations or at events. Often the conversations were about art, JC history, and the Vancouver Asahi.
Grace was often asked to speak about the Vancouver Asahi baseball team. Her research led to the Levelling the Playing Field exhibition at the Japanese Canadian National Museum in 2004. In 2018, she was a consultant for the Historica Canada production of a Heritage Minute to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Asahi’s first Terminal League championship in 1919. The attached photo shows Grace and me at the film shoot. I’m wearing vintage clothing because I got to be in the crowd scene. I was thrilled because of my family connection.
She put me in touch with Elmer Morishita when I was trying to find information about my grandfather Kenichi Doi who was a part of the Vancouver Asahi when they won the 1926 Terminal League championship.
I’ll miss the conversations with Grace. We will carry on the work to ensure JC history such as the Vancouver Asahi stories are remembered.
“Mutual interests and respect”
Reflection by Howard Shimokura, Tashme Historical Society, Vancouver
Although I knew Grace by name, reputation and her early work with NNM, she and I became friends when we met in the mid 2010s at a meeting where the topic was the resurrection of the history of prewar Vancouver’s Japantown (“Paueru-gai”). The discussion was about raising public awareness of the rich history of Paueru-gai. We found that we shared a mutual interest in research and preservation of the early history of Japanese immigration to Canada and the internment during WWII.
I learned through many informal discussions over lunches and dinners of Grace’s personal history and her interests. She shared with me what she considered to be her successes and unsuccesses in her work with galleries, museums and activist groups. She certainly had strong views and opinions. We shared many opinions on the state of documented Japanese Canadian history and need for more funding and resources to expand and enhance our collective history.
For example, there is no definitive history of prewar Vancouver’s Japantown (“Paueru-gai”), the largest and most vibrant pre-war Japanese community in Canada by far.
In 2019, I asked Grace to join me in an effort to form a group of interested volunteers to address the need for research into the pre-WWII Japanese immigration story. We wanted to motivate the research and we wanted NNM to be the organization to house the research. Together we tried to advance the idea of an exhibit about Japantown (“Paueru-gai”) housed on the ground floor of the Tamara Building located close to the center of what was Vancouver’s Japantown as a commemoration project for the City of Vancouver.
We shared a concern that the name Nikkei National Museum was inappropriate (Nikkei Museum is not an appropriate use of the term and is not understood by most Canadians; see Discover Nikkei story) and that the name should be returned to Japanese Canadian Museum just as the American version is called the Japanese American National Museum. We made our concern known to the NNM board. None of these proposals came to fruition.
Early on, we developed a mutual respect for one another and I considered her to be a good friend. When she told me of her plan to return to Manitoba and to Winnipeg, I encouraged the move and said that at her stage in life, that is exactly what she should do, to be close to family. Little did I know that she would pass away so soon.
“Alive in memory”
Reflection by Joy Kogawa, poet and author, Toronto
Grace and I were fairly good friends. She spoke up, spoke out, was direct, got things done and was unafraid. Untypical female Japanese Canadian.
Our hair grew white in the same way.
We had our hair analyzed. We were likely related. I miss Grace.
These days I have a notion I call “the element of memory.” The dead are alive in that element.
“When two or three are gathered together in my name,” Jesus said, “there am I in the midst of them.”
As we remember Grace together, I think she’s with us and we keep her alive in “the element of memory.”
“Always in our hearts”
Reflection by Yobun Shima, Asahi baseball scholar, Tokyo
It was in October 2014 when my cousins Eiyo Shima and Yvonne Shima were honored to meet with Grace for the first time at the Nikkei National Museum, before going to the BC Sports Hall of Fame together to receive my uncle Shoichi Shima’s induction medal. Since then, Grace has been very helpful in my research for the Asahi history including my search for unclaimed medalists of the Asahi. For example, she tried to help me in tracking down K. Endo, one of the unclaimed medalists who was recorded to be living in Winnipeg in the early 1970s.
A few years later she visited Japan when I could meet her both in Osaka and in Tokyo, joined by Mr. Norio Goto, author of The Story of Vancouver Asahi, and descendants of the Asahi players as well as university researchers including Prof. Masumi Izumi and Prof. Norifumi Kawahara. We all welcomed her and could listen to her talk on Japanese Canadians’ life in Canada. One day I had a chance to visit Mio district in Wakayama Prefecture, from where her Nishikihama family members went to Canada, and I could find the records of donations and contributions by the Nishikihama family in Mio.
It was last year that Grace left Vancouver to Winnipeg, where her family members are living. I am so surprised and sad to learn that one year later in July she passed away.
By coincidence, her new book “Chiru Sakura: Falling Cherry Blossoms” was translated into Japanese and published in July this year, of which publication I am happy to know.
I wish to offer my deepest condolences to her family members in Japan and Canada.
Grace, you are always in our hearts.
“Fiesty friend and advocate for justice”
Reflection by Haruko Okano, artist, Vancouver
Grace and I go way back and a lot of our common feisty nature wove through our friendship, professional relationship and our willingness to advocate for justice, equality within and outside of the Japanese Canadian community. She was like a bulldog in her dedication to continue working towards the legacy she has left us. So that the experience of Japanese Canadians be distinct from those coming from Japan after the war and she fought both within the colonial Canadian structure we live in and with those who challenged her from within the Japanese Canadian society.
She fought for inclusion of racialized artists excluded from opportunities other artists enjoyed. She was constantly faced with the particular Canadian way racism manifested within institutions she worked in and she never gave up. It’s ironic that only in the last few years of her life was who she was and what she gifted us with as legacy is finally and fully recognized. Small in physical stature, she was a lioness in spirit. I miss those times we ate together, shared insights and frustrations both with the times and context of our lives.
“Fearless in speaking the truth”
Reflection by Henry Tsang, Associate Dean, Faculty of Culture + Community, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, artist, author, Vancouver
Grace was fierce, stubborn, generous and loyal. She had a keen eye attuned to sussing out injustices which she would articulate with analytical clarity. She stood up for the people and causes she believed in, and was fearless in speaking the truth. Yes, this meant that she was a tell-it-like-it-is no-nonsense person, but that didn’t mean she didn’t like to laugh, because she did. She was generous with her time and expertise, and gave me invaluable feedback on many occasions. She cared, and worked hard to make a difference. I miss her.
“Stalwart leader and lifelong mentor”
Reflection by Cindy Mochizuki, artist, Vancouver
I first met Grace Eiko Thomson when she was the Executive Director of the then Japanese Canadian National Museum in Burnaby in 2000. I had invited her to my fourth year visual arts installation presentation, which was a multi-channel video installation about a JC family on a matsutake mushroom expedition. The work was shown at the SFU Visual Arts building at 611 Alexander Street.
It was an experimental video art piece, and yet, Grace was supportive and encouraging of my practice and told me to keep going—keep making art. I applied shortly after to the JCNM as administrative assistant to her and worked closely beside her. She was a stalwart leader and was quick to teach and advise the young ones around her. We had tremendous amounts of fun and mischief, but we got a lot of important work done. This was the start to our friendship and she soon became a life-long mentor to me who supported and nurtured us emerging artists in her life.
Grace asked me to coordinate the 20th anniversary of the NAJC’s JC Redress in September of 2008, with her as the chair. It was an incredible amount of work to the say the least, but through this we became even closer and she was on my speed dial for our weekly updates; to laugh or rant. Grace had an eye and a love for art and though she identified as a curator, I knew she was also an artist at heart. She will be deeply missed.
“Fiercely independent, deeply loyal”
Reflection by John Greenaway, editor of Geppo magazine, Vancouver
Shortly before Grace left Vancouver to spend her last days in the care of her family in Winnipeg, her friends threw her a going away party at the Vancouver Japanese Language School on Alexander Street. Grace attended the school before the war so it's fitting that it served as a kind of bookend to her long and fascinating life – one of the last places she visited before leaving Vancouver for what would be the final time.
I drove her home after the party and walked her up to her apartment to make sure she got there safely. As I turned to leave she pulled me down for a quick kiss on the cheek. She told me she loved me, so softly that I almost thought I was imagining it. I told her that I loved her too and walked to the elevator. I was so happy, it was ridiculous.
Grace was Grace – cantankerous, opinionated, fiercely independent, someone who fought always for what she believed was right, whatever the consequences. She was also deeply loyal to those she believed in. I count myself lucky to have been her friend. That night was the last time I ever spoke to Grace in person.
© 2025 Norm Ibuki