This week in our ASTU class we read a book called Obasan by Joy Kogawa. This was a fictional book about the Japanese Internment in Canada. This book had a strong theme of memory and how a nation can hold a memory or try and forget one. In previous books that we have read like Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, she writes about not forgetting and making sure to always keep her history alive with her. In Running in The Family by Michael Ondaatje, he was conflicted on saving memories or forgetting them. He blurs lines between forgetting and remembering. Each of these books has a different way of attacking memory. Memory is such a personal aspect of life, our future actions are determined by our past mistakes. Therefore it’s interesting to view history in such contrasting perspectives. Canada as a whole country has tried to forget the Japanese Internment during world war two, I see this as counterproductive to the healing process of Canadian Japanese. B.K Sander, editor of Saturday Night writes “An injustice once performed is fatally easy to repeat.” If the Canadian people don’t acknowledge that this horrible governmental action happened, then it will be hard to prevent it from happening again. Many students in class said that their schools barely touched upon the subject, if they did know about it, then most students were from the states. This shows that there is a major need for the rewriting of the textbooks. Canada should try and actively remember what happened and why it happened; from there, society can prevent this from happening again. The actions that have been taken to repair the damages the government has done, has been a good start; but hardly enough to repay the families in full. But is it even possible to repair all the damage? On September 22, 1988 the prime minister at the time, Bill Mulroney, apologized to the Japanese internment in Canada. He proceeded to give individuals who were interned 21,000 dollars. This was a much-needed action. However, I think that even more can be done, by just educating students in school about the atrocities of the governments past, this can do a lot in shaping Canadians values to appreciate diversity rather than ostracizing the minorities.