Can you imagine someone taking your home, all your possessions and your freedom?

Broken Promises explores the dispossession of Japanese Canadians that began in 1942 when the Canadian government uprooted and interned all people of Japanese descent living in coastal British Columbia. The following year, it authorized the sale of everything they had been forced to leave behind. As a result, when Canada’s internment era finally ended in 1949, Japanese Canadians had nothing to return to. Their homes, farms, businesses, fishing vessels, cars, family pets, personal belongings were gone. 

Broken Promises shares the intergenerational impacts of dispositions while asking the question: “Can Canada offer a just home for all? What would that look like?” Those questions are asked while also acknowledging that the homes taken from Japanese Canadians stood on land earlier taken from Indigenous peoples.

Join us on October 9^th to explore this new temporary exhibition with free admission to those in attendance from 5 — 6:30 p.m. Guided tours will be available. Afterwards, learn more about this exhibition from Art Miki, former president of the National Association of Japanese Canadians, Sherri Shinobu Kajiwara Director and Curator at the Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre, and Dr. Jordan Stanger‐Ross, professor at the University of Victoria.

The formal program will be followed by a reception in the Stuart Clark Garden of Contemplation.

Art Miki has spent many years teaching people of all ages about the Japanese experience in Canada. He has served as a teacher, an elementary school principal and a citizenship judge. As president of the National Association of Japanese Canadians, he helped negotiate the Japanese Canadian redress agreement with the Government of Canada for the violation of basic rights of its citizens during the Second World War. Art was president on the Japanese Cultural Association of Manitoba, founder of the Asian Heritage Society, and advisor to the Canadian Race Relations Foundation for over 20 years. He was on the community advisory council for Landscapes of Injustice project with University of Victoria. He is author of the two books: Road to JusticeGaman – Perseverance. For his contributions, he has received the Order of Canada, Order of Manitoba and Order of the Rising Sun from government of Japan.

Sherri is Director and Curator at the Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre in Burnaby. Sherri has been a fine‐arts professional since 1992 as a gallerist, gallery director, gallery owner, writer, editor, publisher and curator. She is a graduate of the Sauder School of Business at UBC and of the Board of Trade’s Leadership Vancouver program. She co‐owned the Bjornson Kajiwara Gallery from 2004 to 2008, and launched an online arts communications company, Vantage Art Projects, 2009 to 2015, to create parallel opportunities for artists through satellite exhibitions and on‐demand prints and publications. Sherri remains passionate about communication and collaboration to support creativity. She is dedicated to the mission of honouring, preserving, and sharing Japanese Canadian history and Japanese culture in Canada.

Dr. Jordan Stanger‐Ross is a professor at the University of Victoria whose research and teaching focuses on migration, race and inequality in the twentieth century, especially in North America. He is currently the Co‐Director of Past Wrongs, Future Choices, a project to integrate and tell the history of the internment, incarceration, and dispossession of people of Japanese descent in Australia, Brazil, Canada, and the United States in the 1940s. Previously, he directed Landscapes of Injustice, a partnership focused on the dispossession of Japanese Canadians. Landscapes of Injustice was recognized with many awards, including a Heritage BC prize for outstanding contributions to provincial history, a Canadian Race Relations Foundation award for excellence in anti‐racist education and a prize from the Canadian Historical Association for excellence in public history.

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights is pleased to host Broken Promises. This exhibition was developed by the Nikkei Museum & Cultural Centre and the Royal BC Museum in partnership with the Landscapes of Injustice project.

This program is also supported by The University of Victoria, Past Wrongs Future Choices, and The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.