1. Racial Minorities as Enemies Alien?
Surviving Trauma
1. Japanese Internment
2. Obasan Chaps 1-4
Kate Liu
Literary Criticism: History (3)–
History and Traumatic Memory

2. Outline Joy Kogawa & Obasan: General Introd. Japanese Internment;
Examples of Racial Differences and their Consequences
Not Enemy Aliens;
Noami’s treatment of the Past vs. Her Aunts’

3. Joy Kogawa--Biographical Sketch
born in Vancouver, B.C. in 1935
relocated to Slocan and Coaldale, Alberta during and after WWII
Selected Publications:
Obasan
Woman in the Woods [poems]
Naomi's Road [children’s lit.]
Itsuka [Someday: the redress movement]
The Rain Ascends
[a woman’s discovery of her missionary father’s being a pederast]

4. Awards for Obasan Books in Canada, First Novel Award.
Canadian Authors Association, Book of the Year Award.
Periodical Distributors of Canada, Best Paperback Fiction Award.
Before Columbus Foundation, The American Book Award.

5. Obasan--Family Trees Grandma Nakane Grandpa Nakane Ayako (Obasan)
1893 ~ 1945
Grandpa
Nakane
~ 1942
Grandma
Kato
Grandpa
Kato
Ayako
(Obasan)
1891-
Isamu
(Sam)
Mother
Nissei: Emily
1916-
Father
(Tadashi Mark)
Sansie:
Stephen
1933-
Naomi
1936-
stillborn
Ref. Family photo -- Chap 4; pp ; 20~ Discussed later

6. Timeline 1893--Grandpa Nakane arrived in Canada
1933 – Uncle and Obasan got married.
1941--Mother returned to Japan (clue: p. 20 )
1942--Vancouver Hastings Park prison
1945--the bombing of Nagasaki
1951--moved to Granton
1954--the first visit to the coulee (p. 2)
1972--narrative present--Uncle’s death

7. M a p
Image source:

8. Japanese Internment in Canada
The turn of the century: early immigrants (beginning; 8:00-11:40)
1941, December 7--the bombing of Pearl Harbor
1942--evacuation of Canadian Japanese (Nikkei) from the Pacific Coast--the great mass movement in the history of Canada (Obasan 92-93)--21,000 people moved (clip 2 13:00 – 17:30 confiscation; clip 3 relocation)
deportation or 2nd relocation  right to vote and return to B.C. (clip 4 22:00-) (Also chap 14 of the novel)

9. Differences between the States & Canada
U.S.: California Alien Land Law prohibited "aliens ineligible to citizenship" (ie. all Asian immigrants) from owning land or property, but permitted three year leases.
April The assembly centers, relocation centers, and internment camps were set up, and relocation of Japanese-Americans began. Internment camps were scattered all over the interior West, in isolated desert areas of Arizona, California, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, and Wyoming.
Executive Order 9066 was rescinded by President Roosevelt,
the last of the camps was closed in March.

10. Differences between the States and Canada (2)
-- Dispersal of family members--men sent to road camps in the interior of B.C., sugar beet projects on the Prairies, POW camp in Ontario;
-- not allowed to go back to the West after the War;
-- their properties liquidated.

11. Differences between the States and Canada (3)
U.S.
President Jimmy Carter signed the Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians Act – for investigation
1991 – Bush’s letter of apology
Canada
1980s--redress movement
1988--formal apology to Nikkei+ $21,000 (Cdn.) to the survivors

12. Obasan: Time Line & Plot (1)
1972 |
1954
Chap 1: 8/ Present Cecil, Alberta
Granton  1951(the bombing of Nagasaki) —
Chap 2: 9/13, 1972 Uncle’s death
Chap 3: back to Obasan’s house, question about the mother
Chap 4: memories of the family (stone bread)

13. Obasan: Time Line & Plot (2)
1972 |
1941
Vancouver Days
Chap 5: Obasan in the attic, memory as spider
Chap 6: nightmare
Chap 7: Emily’s package—her last visit and the question if Naomi wants to know “everything”
Chap 8: Obasan lady of the leftovers
Chap 9: starts to remember- from the photo to memories of the house p. 50 —
Chap 10: Momotaro
Chap 11: episodes of the white chicken and Old Man Gower
Chap 12: —separation starts—the mother first;
Chap 13: preparation to leave;
Chap 14: bath with Obasan; Emily’s diary (-110)

14. Obasan: Time Line & Plot (3)
1942 train to Slocan
Slocan, BC
1945, leaving Slocan
Chap 15: leaving for Slocan
Chap 16~26 : fragmentation and re-building of a community in Slocan
Chap 27 ~days in Granton, Alberta, and Emily’s package
Chap start to talk about the mother
Chap 37~39 – final revelation & resolution
Chap 40 – the government document -- against the deportation of Japanese Canadians.

15. Discussion Questions
How are Naomi, Obasan and Uncle, as survivors of the collective trauma of internment, presented at the beginning of the novel?
How does Naomi start to remember?
The Kato and Nakane’s family photo presented?
What can be the significance of the opening epigraphs?

16. Japanese-Canadians: (1) Not Enemies Alien
Uncle --Uncle Sam, Chief Sitting Bull) ([1] 2);
-- adaptation to new lives and mixture of two cultures [3] p. 13 stone bread, margarine as Alberta;
Father –like Mandrake the magician
Obasan -- an old woman in
Mexico, France, as “the true and rightful owner of the earth.) ([3] 15)

17. Japanese-Canadians: (1) Displaced, aging and family life disrupted
Uncle – displaced from the sea and his fishing boats([3]13), forever severed from the sea ([4] 22)
Uncle and Obasan – old and fixated
(uncle --1, Obasan and Gramdma N – [4]17
the house is old) ([3] 15)
Emily and Naomi – no love life ([2] 8)
Naomi-- tense ([2] 7);
-- her thirst for knowledge ([1] 3)
-- rational control over her emotion: her mind separated from herself ([2] 9).
Stephen in constant flight ([3] 14)

18. The Past: Different Treatments
How do the three generations each deal with the past differently?
Obasan--issei—
language of grief--silence ([3] 14);
ancient; accepting death;
live with the past ([3]11, 14-16; [5] ),
Emily--nisei—
energetic, visionary ([2] 8),
To Naomi: “You have to remember…Denial is gangrene” [壞疽] (49-50)
[later]“word warrior” (32), “white blood cells” (34)
Asserting her Canadian identity--“This is my own, my native land”

19. Different Generations on Language and Silence
“To the issei, honor and dignity is expressed through silence, the twig bending with the wind….The sansei view silence as a dangerous kind of cooperation with the enemy.” Joy Kagawa in an interview with Susan Yim

20. Historical Reconstructions –[more next time]
Three ways of dealing with memories:
Obasan: ancient woman who stays in history
--can be consumed by the past,
--can make use of the leftovers
Emily: “The past is the future” p. 42
Naomi: “Crimes of history can stay in history” p. 41

21. Naomi’s thirst and fragmentary memories
“Why do we come here every year?” “Why did my mother not return?”
-- her thirst for knowledge ([1] 3)
Transferred to her uncle ([3]14)
Photographic memories –
Older relatives described with humor –like advance guard
Grandfather Kato: the toes of his boots to "angle down like a ballet dancer's" (17)
Grandmother Kato: "nostrils wide in her startled bony face" (17).

22. Naomi’s Photographic memories
Family photo:
Grandma Nakane's "plump hands" and "soft lap“
Grandfather Nakane—like Napoleon.
"look[ing] straight ahead, carved and rigid, with their expressionless Japanese faces and their bodies pasted over with Rule Britannia " (18).
Mother – beautiful, fragile; Emily – short waved hair

23. Naomi’s Photographic memories
Family as a knit blanket, moth-eaten
Uncle and Father’s – the boat – the relocation.
Memories – in a whirlpool of protective silence  epigraph

24. For next time -- From dis-member to remember to re-member
Pay attention to the use of imagery: of animals, fairy tales, fragments, stone and sea.

25. Imagery of Stone & Sea What is the significance of the stone imagery?
The bible--“a white stone”--”a new name written”
epigraph--“The word is stone.”
Uncle’s stone bread
the coulee/ the ocean/ uncle and Chief Sitting Bull/ the family as a knit blanket (24-25)

26. References
Japanese Canadian Internment
A History of the Japanese-American Internment
Analysis of two apology letters

27. coulee - 深谷