Sergeant Masumi Mitsui and the Japanese Canadian War Memorial

Abstract

For much of the twentieth century, military commemoration operated in a context of pan-Canadian remembrance. This emphasis overlooked the groups outside the mainstream that pursued their own goals through military service and commemoration, which sometimes differed from and challenged the hegemony of national collective memory. A case in point is the Japanese Canadian War Memorial in Vancouver and its intersections with the military service of Masumi Mitsui and other Japanese-Canadian soldiers of the First World War. After the war, the Japanese-Canadian veterans fought for the right to vote in provincial elections, which they eventually secured in 1931, thereby becoming the first Asian Canadians to attain the franchise in British Columbia. The veterans’ wartime service could not prevent anti-Japanese-Canadian sentiment before and during the Second World War, leading to the seizure of their properties and their forced removal from the coast. The article foregrounds Mitsui’s return to Vancouver in 1985 as the honoured guest in a ceremony to relight the lantern at the Japanese Canadian War Memorial. Drawing on insights of the philosopher of history Walter Benjamin, this history is approached in light of Benjamin’s account of storytelling traditions and the ‘now-time’ of historical agency. Durant une grande partie du vingtième siècle, les cérémonies commémoratives militaires partout au Canada s’inscrivent dans un contexte de remémoration pancanadienne. Or, ces cérémonies excluaient les groupes qui n’appartenaient pas à la culture dominante. Ces derniers poursuivaient des objectifs qui leur étaient propres tant durant leur service militaire qu’au moment des manifestations commémoratives. D’ailleurs, leurs objectifs pouvaient parfois se distinguer et voir même remettre en question l’hégémonie la mémoire collective pan-canadienne. Un bel exemple de cela est le Monument aux morts des canadiens d’origine japonaise de Vancouver et ce qu’il a signifié pour Masumi Mitsui et d’autres soldats japonais-canadiens de la Première Guerre mondiale. Après la guerre, les anciens combattants canadiens d’origine japonaise ont livré bataille pour obtenir le droit de vote aux é lections provinciales – un droit qu’ils ont éventuellement obtenu en 1931. Ils sont ainsi devenus les premiers Canadiens d’origine asiatique à obtenir le droit de vote en Colombie-Britannique. Le service militaire en temps de guerre des anciens combattants n’a pas pu empêcher le développement d’un sentiment anti-japonais-canadien avant et pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale et qui a donné lieu à la saisie de leurs biens et à leur déportation de la côte. L’article met au premier plan le retour de Mitsui à Vancouver en 1985 à titre d’invité d’honneur à une cérémonie où on allait rallumer la lanterne du Monument aux morts. Inspirés des réflexions de l’historien philosophe Walter Benjamin, cette étude établit le rapport entre les traditions des conteurs et ce qu’il appelle le ‘now time of historical agency’.

Figure 1 from: Muchowski J (2021) Vernacular historical practices on Holocaust non-sites of memory in Poland. International Journal of Heritage, Memory and Conflict 1: 37-44. https://doi.org/10.3897/hmc.1.63351

“…In describing the people engaged in the above practices, I have used the term "vernacular historian". Ten years ago, Lyle Dick used this notion to discuss practices of local historians, who had been active in the Canadian prairies in the XIX and XX centuries (Dick 2010a(Dick , 2010b(Dick , 2013Devine 2016Devine , 2017. Lyle made three tentative observations about the practice of vernacular historians.…”

“…Thirdly, it is fruitful to avoid a straight opposition of professional and vernacular: better to acknowledge both kinds of history as extreme points on a continuum of historical practices. The position of the vernacular historian does not only result from local, racial or class identifications, but may be adopted out of a strong commitment to the vernacular community and its problems (Dick 2010a;Devine 2016Devine , 2017.…”

“…The goal of my analysis is to describe these practices, discuss their critical potential, and indicate their distinct features as activities pertaining to contested sites of memory. I found a central instrument for approaching this task in concepts of "non-site of memory" and "vernacular historian" as introduced to the debate by Claude Lanzmann (and further elaborated by Roma Sendyka) (Lanzmann 1990;Sendyka 2016) and Lyle Dick (Dick 2010a(Dick , 2010b(Dick , 2013. The term 'non-site of memory' is a critical extension of Pierre Nora's sites of memory and refers to sites of violence whose forms of commemoration are questioned by local residents or other groups with an interest in the sites' past 1 .…”

“…The term 'non-site of memory' is a critical extension of Pierre Nora's sites of memory and refers to sites of violence whose forms of commemoration are questioned by local residents or other groups with an interest in the sites' past 1 . "Vernacular historian" is a notion that Lyle Dick uses to describe the practices of Canadian local historians who commit themselves to their communities and treat historical activities as a means to strengthen its identity and support the appreciation of its problems (Dick 2010a(Dick , 2010b(Dick , 2013Devine 2016Devine , 2017. As a result, I present the cases of four vernacular historians whose activities were entangled with sites of genocidal violence against Jewish Poles and Roma.…”

War remembrance in a sacralized space of memory: The origins and evolution of Volkstrauertag in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada

“…This case study adds to the small but growing literature on the war cemetery as both a commemoration space and a site of pilgrimage (Butler and Suntikul, 2012; Stephens, 2014; Walls, 2011). It also contributes to the even smaller body of work dealing with vernacular commemoration by ethnocultural communities whose memories of particular wars may be perceived by the outsider to be potentially contentious in relation to official scripts or to other ethnocultural and religious groups (Dick, 2010; Kobayashi and Ziino, 2009). Finally, the author is not aware of any other study that deals with Volkstrauertag outside of Germany.…”