This week, our ASTU class got the opportunity to present each of our Archival group project with the rest of the class. It was an interesting hour and a half where groups took turns filling the public knowledge gap through the exploration of the Rare Books and Special Collections at UBC. While all 5 groups (including my own) presented on very intriguing topics, one really interested me. One group presented on the topic of Japanese internment in Canada, through the analysis of the Japanese Canadian research collection. The group focused particularly on the analysis of the government sanctioned Japanese-Canadian news paper “The New Canadian” depicting the life of Japanese-Canadians during the period after the Pearl Harbor bombing and during World War II. During the presentation, they talked about how the news paper depicted these Japanese-Canadians as submissive and compliant during these times of relocation to designated areas. I felt that this itself created a knowledge gap at the time the paper was published, as the authoritative government silenced the voices of this minority group.
As mentioned in Jiwani and Young’s journal article, Missing and Murdered Women: Reproducing Marginality in News Discourse, media representation of marginalized groups is very limited, even in this modern era of information technology. It’s interesting to see that the authoritative silencing of voices has moved from a centralized authority figure to the “dominant frame” decided by society. If something becomes of interest to the public, it gets more attention. Simple as that.
Recently, news has been booming regarding the contamination of the water supply in Flint, Michigan. As one article shows, the excessive levels of lead and iron in the water was due to the lack of funding and poor decision made by government officials in the area. This particular issue was covered by multiple news organizations within the US, casting a public spotlight onto the issue of water contamination. This led to additional attention towards the topic, and sparked an increase in coverage on water contamination of local news organizations across the US. Local media in cities such as Cleveland are attempting to expose a contamination issue similar to that in Flint. As this news topic receives more and more coverage, this marginalized topic will soon become popularized.
However, this did not happen in Canada during World War II. Japanese-Canadians did not have the opportunity to share their hardships with the public nor did they want to attract any attention in a “anti-oriental” society. This lack of coverage on the issue of racialized relocation led to the creation of a knowledge gap, an issue which opposed the “dominant frame” at the time. It is important for the public to recognize this knowledge gap and reflect upon it. This is what our archival group projects were made to do: rebuild the public knowledge gap piece by piece.