Last week in ASTU class, we went to rare book library with Dr. Luger. In the library, we read the archive materials about Obasan. According to the libertarian, the achieves are collected from author Kagowa and the order they hold the archives is the follows the chronological order that Kagowa sent the achieves. Since there is a reason that Kagowa sent the files in a certain way.
The achieve assigned to my group is fan letters sent to Kagowa in the 1980s. There are letters from students, teachers, and kids. The one interesting thing we found in these letters is the interaction between Kagowa and readers. As Libertarian suggests, although there is no letter written by Kagowa in the achieve, the two letters from a Canadian history student show how Kagowa helps her on her project by giving advice.
Other two groups sitting next to me got the achieves showing how former prime minister Pierre Trudeau responded to Kagowa’s book and how Canadian and US newspaper response to the book. In other achieves, there are also records about the critics on the book. Those critics show how hard it was for Kagowa to publish the book.
Before we left, we were allowed to browse other archives about Obasan. I found some letters in Japanese and the rough draft of Obasan. Although I was exposed to the history of Japanese Internment in Canada before, when I read and touch those archives, I got a stronger sense that Naomi’s story is adapted from a true story and is written by a Japanese Canadian whose family suffered from discrimination. I also can feel the efforts that Kagowa paid to write the novel to acknowledge the truth that government didn’t pay enough attention.
Dr luger shared her own experience showing how fake stories are spread through the Internet and told us the importance of these handwriting achieves— they’re solid evidence of the history. I believe, in the age that internet is highly developed, keeping the archives become more important. Also, those archives remind us that we should learn from the past and try to avoid making the same mistakes in the future.