Broken Promises is the first travelling exhibition to explore the dispossession of Japanese Canadians in the 1940s. It illuminates the loss of home and the struggle for justice of one racially marginalized community. Developed by the Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre and the Royal British Columbia Museum, Broken Promises is grounded in research from Landscapes of Injustice – a seven‐year multi‐disciplinary, multi‐institutional, community‐engaged project. Learn about life for Japanese Canadians in Canada before the war, the administration of their lives during and after the war, and how legacies of dispossession continue to this day.

The internment and dispossession of Japanese Canadians happened in the context of the Second World War. Within months of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the Canadian government rounded up thousands of Japanese Canadians from the West Coast. Officials believed that Japanese Canadians might plot against Canada now that it was at war with Japan. Homes, businesses and personal belongings were seized. Japanese Canadians were forced to spend the rest of the war in isolated internment camps. The federal government promised to return their property after the war but sold it instead.

Broken Promises also explores the government officials who were responsible for Japanese Canadian dispossession. The seizure of home, businesses and personal belongings was overseen by the Custodian of Enemy Property, a branch of the Canadian government created to liquidate the assets of enemies of the Canadian state during times of war.

Broken Promises tells this history through the stories of seven narrators using personal artifacts, maps, archival documents, media interactives and curated oral history interviews. The exhibition also includes original artworks by Emma Nishimura, whose art explores her own family’s history during the Second World War.