Please join us for a talk by Dr. Naoko Kato, who tells the stories of members of the Japanese diaspora who were “doubly abandoned” by both the Canadian and Japanese states during the postwar period.
Why did postwar Japan recognize some displaced populations as “war victims” while rejecting others such as Japanese Canadian deportees? This talk re-evaluates the postwar history of the Japanese diaspora by following a group of issei and nisei resisters who were “doubly abandoned“ by both the Canadian and Japanese states.
The story begins in Canada with the salvaging of the community’s mobile library in Vancouver, feeding the resistance behind the barbed wire of the Angler POW camp, where nisei demanding rights as Canadian citizens were incarcerated alongside issei community leaders.
Following these deportees to postwar Japan, Dr. Naoko Kato traces their continued resistance as they demanded recognition as war victims rather than “voluntary” repatriates. Through the Maple Leaf Cultural Association, they worked across the Pacific to return the remains of deceased inmates, reclaiming their place from both states that attempted to abandon them.
This talk is free and open to the public. No registration is required.
Date & Time:
Friday, February 27, 2026 | 12:00pm – 1:30pm PT
Location:
Room 604, Asian Centre, 1871 West Mall, Vancouver
Speaker
Naoko Kato teaches East Asian History at Corpus Christi College and St. Mark’s College. A scholar with the Past Wrongs Future Choices project and a former Japanese language librarian at UBC, she specializes in the history of the Japanese diaspora and archives. She is the author of Kaleidoscope: The Uchiyama Bookstore and its Sino-Japanese Visionaries (2022), and published her most recent article on cultural collaboration in Modern Asian Studies (2024).
