Witness to Loss: Race, Culpability, and Memory in the Dispossession of Japanese Canadians (McGill-Queen's Studies in Ethnic History, 29) (Volume 2) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0773551212 ISBN 13: 9780773551213

Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2017

Synopsis

When the federal government uprooted and interned Japanese Canadians en masse in 1942, Kishizo Kimura saw his life upended along with tens of thousands of others. But his story is also unique: as a member of two controversial committees that oversaw the forced sale of the property of Japanese Canadians in Vancouver during the Second World War, Kimura participated in the dispossession of his own community.

In Witness to Loss Kimura’s previously unknown memoir - written in the last years of his life - is translated from Japanese to English and published for the first time. This remarkable document chronicles a history of racism in British Columbia, describes the activities of the committees on which Kimura served, and seeks to defend his actions. Diverse reflections of leading historians, sociologists, and a community activist and educator who lived through this history give context to the memoir, inviting readers to grapple with a rich and contentious past. More complex than just hero or villain, oppressor or victim, Kimura raises important questions about the meaning of resistance and collaboration and the constraints faced by an entire generation.

Illuminating the difficult, even impossible, circumstances that confronted the victims of racist state action in the mid-twentieth century, Witness to Loss reminds us that the challenge of understanding is greater than that of judgment.

About this title

About the Authors

Jordan Stanger-Ross is professor of history and the project director of Landscapes of Injustice at the University of Victoria.

Pamela Sugiman is professor of sociology and dean of arts at Toronto Metropolitan University and the chair of the Oral History Cluster of the Landscapes of Injustice project.

From the Back Cover

Series One: Donald Harman Akenson, Editor
Series Two: John Zucchi, Edito

This series was launched in 1987 as a response to the growing field of ethnic and immigration history in Canada in the generation following the rise of multiculturalism. Although the original intent was to publish historical works on ethnicity in Canada, the international nature of ethnic studies has led to the series becoming truly international in its scope and authorship.

The series has therefore gone beyond Canada's borders to examine cultural history in Guyana, racial conflict in New Zealand, West Indian Blacks in Costa Rica, Syrian refugees in Sweden, and Italians in Paris and London. Books in the series have been written mainly from a historical perspective but works by specialists in geography, folklore, sociology, literature, material culture, and Indigenous studies have also been included. We firmly believe that successful and sophisticated studies in all of these fields deserve to be called to the attention of the scholarly community and all those with an interest in ethnicity, immigration, and integration.

With an extensive list of published titles, many of them award-winning, McGill-Queen's Studies in Ethnic History demonstrates what future volumes in the series should be: original, meticulous but accessible scholarly investigations in an exciting field.

Edition details

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0773551212
• ISBN 13: 9780773551213
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 320
• Editor: Stanger-Ross Jordan, Sugiman Pamela