My full name is Tatsuo Kage I was born in Japan and I was brought up mostly in Tokyo before I came here. When the Asia Pacific War started, I was just entering elementary school. My special experience was that because of the bombing by the Americans, many students in Tokyo were evacuated to the countryside so I spent a year and a half in a northern rural area with my schoolmates and several teachers. That was my first experience of leaving home. Right after the end of the war, I came home and that was a big change or shock because until then I was a military boy indoctrinated by the idea of militaristic Japanese ambitions. After the Americans came to occupy Japan, Japan was trying to make a peaceful democratic country so a lot of things changed. One experience was just soon after that, we had to take textbooks brought to school and teacher instructed which pages had to be deleted or which part of a page to black out so we don’t use it.
That kind of big change made me interested in history. I majored in history in university. After ten years and graduate school and overseas studies, I became a teacher in university teaching Political Science and History. That was fine. It was a stable, good job. I worked ten years that way.
Then I thought I needed some kind of change. That was the time our children were growing up. The oldest one was about Grade 7 and we decided to try to live in Canada for a few years. I had not really made up my mind to permanently immigrate but my wife is Canadian and the children are mixed. We thought this might be a better place to live. That was in 1975.
After a few years, we had to make a big decision on whether to continue staying here or go back to Japan. We thought we could survive here and decided to stay.
For the first few years, I did not have much contact with the community because I had academic work from Japan. But then I was feeling bored. Just at that time we made contact with the Japanese Canadian community, especially immigrants from Japan. That was in1977, the Centennial year of the first Japanese migration (1877 the first one came). There were many community events. Several of us got together and formed a Japanese immigrants association for post war immigrants. My first involvement was producing a directory of immigrants plus a guide book of services in Canada. That was my crash course to learn about the community and immigrants
Year later, I started working at MOSAIC (multicultural language services). I had good preparation because I knew already how to help other people. I stayed there 10 years. That was a very good experience and also very enjoyable. Besides myself, other people are mostly immigrants from other countries. We had Chinese, Vietnamese, Polish, Russian, Latin American workers. My main job was helping Japanese immigrants. Occasionally, because I studied in Germany, I was also helping German speaking immigrants.
In 1988, the Japanese Canadian redress payment was approved in compensation for wartime treatment. They were uprooted and incarcerated during the war so there was a campaign for redress, actually through my community organization’s involvement. The Japanese Canadian Citizens Association, (JCCA) is a representative organization. I was a board member for many years. While I was at that organization, the campaign for redress started very seriously. So I was involved in that. Because the community had different generations, for example pre-war immigrants (elderly), their children (middle aged), and third generation (young and active people). There were communication problems because they couldn’t speak to each other. Most of my people involved could not function in Japanese. Myself and Takeo of Tonari Gumi were instrumental to facilitate the communication especially with the seniors, to get involved, understand the issues and the process of the campaign. That was a really rewarding experience for me.
After the redress settlement, I was working for the redress, employed by the National Association of Japanese Canadians to help people to apply and provide bilingual assistance. That was also an interesting experience that included visiting Japan. The reason was that after the end of the second world war in 1946, about 4,000 Japanese Canadians were exiled. Many of them were Canadian citizens who were nevertheless deported, even though citizens can’t be deported from their own country. This was a major human rights issue for our community. The government and the National Association of Japanese Canadians formed a joint delegation to visit Japan and help people who were eligible for redress. I was one of them and that again was a very interesting experience.
Multiculturalism is a concept I never heard before I came here in the 1970s. After I came here, a lot of talk and discussions went on about multiculturalism. It took some time to understand. The superficial understanding was song and dance events that I remember I also attended. Gradually it became more serious. Like redress itself, it is recognition of minorities’ past so it is related to multiculturalism. Actually, the federal Department of Multiculturalism is in charge of the redress issues. Also, I think multiculturalism can be incomplete unless it is linked to the protection of minorities’ rights,so that is human rights. Through my other activities, I am getting more understanding of multiculturalism. .
Another thing, even though I was involved mostly in Japanese organizations, this was a process to get involved into the wider society. For example, three or four years after I came, I was attending public hearings on multiculturalism or environmental protection and so on. That kind of opportunity may not have happened if I kept staying in Japan because I was doing the same thing all the time. Here I had to expand my contacts and activities in different things. People were asking unexpected things like if a brief can be presented. I was trying to do that. So that is another multicultural aspect of my involvement. I can’t really give a definition, but Canada has an environment to enhance multiculturalism and from the minority’s point of view, you watch out so our interests and aspirations are enhanced through multiculturalism.
In our community, the involvement of young people in the community is a big issue. Many young people are not interested in heritage, language and culture. We always talk about what to do about it. Fortunately, my children are interested in and involved in Japanese Canadian activities. One is a Japanese drum player at the professional level. Another is a martial arts teacher and dancer. She was trained in Japan in modern dance and she is trying to fuse western and Japanese style dancing. We never say this should be done or that should be done but I am very pleased they are somehow relating to their culture and background. What I would suggest is: we can’t really ask them to do certain things but we have to model what you do and children usually understand what parents appreciate or not appreciate. We were already involved in many Japanese Canadian activities so it was very natural for them to join the festival, for example. So my main message is that you have to be a model and younger people will accept or reject because our immigrant adjustment process is always selective adaptation. If you like you will accept it, if you don’t like it you will reject it. It’s very natural. As an adult or senior person, you could do what you feel was best and younger generation will see what to do
I need to get used to be called an elder or senior even though physically I belong to that generation I always felt I can behave more as a person younger than seniors. But I think I should accept my age and my limit of physical and mental activities. So it is a very difficult stage but you can see some people even in their 80s who are very healthy and active. So I think if you pursue the healthy life probably you can keep on several years more.
When I was working, I was always with other groups. Nowadays I have some limited contact but it is always beneficial. In 2007 we had interesting multiethnic events: the commemoration of the 1907 riots. That was the race riots in Chinatown and Japan town in 1907. Chinese and Japanese people worked together. Indo-Canadian people joined because they also had difficulty. The famous incident was in 1914, the Komagata Maru, Three hundred Indian people tried to immigrate but couldn’t land and were sent back home. We had a common experience and we share a past history and we work together for a better world. Of course, there has been a lot of improvement since then but you can’t sit on what you achieved. You always have to be watchful.