Today I’m going to talk about how I feel about Canadian policies towards internationals. We have been hearing for a while now that Canada is a multicultural state and the people are very nice and welcoming, the Canadian government itself is being very lenient towards immigrants, but after reading Kogawa’s novel ‘Obasan’, we have second thoughts about this whole idea.
Who knows when Canada goes to war with our country and we are treated the same way?
The treatment of the immigrants, or even Canadian-born Japanese, in the 20th Century around World War II was wrong and the Canadian government still has to face the consequences of their act in the past.
We are aware that Obasan is fiction, but there is no doubt that it shows us the true facts about the relationship of the Canadian Government with the Japanese Canadians and the way the Japanese Canadians were treated. Canada did realize their mistakes and Mulroney did apologize to the effected for the way they had been treated and a financial compensation was also made, but it was considerably late.We can relate this to our reading and understanding of Van Peer’s article where he talks about literature leading to an escape from the encapsulated world, but really is it the same way in reality?
Literature does open us up to imagination and a free world, but can it be implemented in a situation like Kogawa’s?
The fact that this novel is not a biography but literature, might make some people feel like this maybe exagerated, but the true treatment was close enough to this piece of writing and we do understand the general concept and are able to place ourselves in the position of Kogawa and other Japanese-Canadians who faced hardship in the 20th century.
The question again is, Canada may have realized what they did was wrong but today in the 21st century if we see a time like that again, would they do the same, and after several years apologize?
Being an international student this is a great concern to all of us, because times may have changed but the nature of events will always remain the same.