Last week, our ASTU professor brought us to the library to visit the Rare Books and Special Collection. It was interesting to see the archival material that can give us a deeper understanding of analyzing Obasan. Obasan is a novel of historical fiction about how Japanese-Canadians were treated in Canada during the Second world war. We follow protagonist Naomi’s journey in the present but also through flashbacks to her childhood. As a class, we discovered that Kogawa collected official documents throughout the years and had sent them to the University of British Columbia. It does add a personal touch to see everything that Kogawa decided to keep and it also adds a depth of reality to Obasan. It distraught me when I looked at the official documents by the Domain Department of Labour. The papers showed the unfortunate relocation of Japanese-Canadian families after being sent away from their homes. It baffled me that such forms exist in Canada monitoring the consumption of water, food and how much each person earned, although it was generous for the Anglican church to support Japanese Canadians families, most Canadians had a prejudice views against Japanese Canadians.

We saw many fascinating documents that gave context to understand this novel. For example, the hand-drawn family tree captivated me. It showed the first steps of creating this novel. It had crossed off dates as if Kogawa had trouble remembering the original dates. It amplified the authenticity of this book. We can see how is Joy Kogawa preserving literature through memory. In addition, we saw the first handwritten chapters of Obasan. It was slightly hard to read but displays the rawness of Kogawa’s ideas. We also noticed that Kogawa changed names for certain characters from the original hand-written version to the final product.

While reading a few archival materials, the letter from Pierre Trudeau amused me the most. He said that he would take Obasan on vacation to the beach. Ironically this would not be a novel for the beach, it would be a very depressing read. This book takes time to grasp all the information that’s given to us. I recommended to the librarian that we should send the current Prime Minister a copy of this book and hopefully not receive the same answer as his father.

This brought me to think about the relationship between First Nation and the Canadian government. I believe we can see a similar circumstance between the recognition of Japanese Canadians and the recognition of First Nations. It took many years for the government to admit their wrongdoing of the Japanese Canadians. Unfortunately, First Nations have a long and complicated history with the Canadian government. Till this day, recognition has not been reinforced. Most indigenous people believe that they have not received complete recognition from the Canadian government.

To conclude, we can see history repeats itself in many ways. Perhaps we should learn from our past mistakes and ask ourselves what we should do to recognize minority groups.