Japanese Canadian Incarceration: Mary Kitagawa, Survivor and Social Justice Advocate, Discusses Canada’s Horrible Legacy Patchworks

Mary Kitagawa discusses the heinous events she experienced during Japanese Canadian incarceration and the fight for justice afterwards. This horrible event occurred between 1941-1949 and led to 22,000 Japanese Canadians being imprisoned, dispossessed, detained, and forced into low-wage labour by the Government of Canada. The trauma from this unspeakable event lives on in the survivors and their descendants. In this PCHC-MoM collaboration episode, Mary discusses her family’s experience of incarceration and the impact it had on her life and on the Japanese Canadian (JC) community, and the advocacy work she did with her husband Tosh Kitagawa. Together, they worked on every project to find justice for the JC community with the Japanese Canadian Citizens Association and Human Rights Committee (JCCAHRC). This work is visible in two important projects, the Landscapes of Injustice and Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre in Burnaby.