Obasan
Chaps 1-4—Racial Minorities as Enemy Alien;
Memories
Chaps 5-14 -- Trauma and Survival in Different
Languages
Racial Minorities as
Enemies Alien
1. Japanese Internment
2. Obasan Chaps 1-4
Kate Liu
Outline
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Joy Kogawa & Obasan: General Introd.
Japanese Internment;
Obasan
• Examples of Racial Differences and their
Consequences
• Not Enemy Aliens;
• Noami’s treatment of the Past vs. Her Aunts’
Joy Kogawa--Biographical Sketch

born in Vancouver, B.C. in 1935
 relocated to Slocan and Coaldale, Alberta
during and after WWII

Selected Publications:

Obasan. 1983.
Woman in the Woods. 1985.[poems]
Naomi's Road. 1986. [children’s lit.]
Itsuka. 1993. [Someday: the redress movement]
The Rain Ascends. 1995.
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
[a woman’s discovery of her missionary father’s
being a pederast]
Awards for Obasan

Books in Canada, First Novel
Award.
 Canadian Authors Association,
Book of the Year Award.
 Periodical Distributors of
Canada, Best Paperback
Fiction Award.
 Before Columbus Foundation,
The American Book Award.
Obasan--Family Trees
Grandma
Nakane
Grandpa
Nakane
1893 ~ 1945
~ 1942
Ayako
Isamu
(Obasan) (Sam)
1891-
1889-1972
stillborn
Grandma
Kato
Father
(Tadashi Mark)
Mother
Sansie:
Stephen
Naomi
1933-
Grandpa
Kato
Nissei: Emily
1916-
1936-
Ref. Family photo -- Chap 4; pp. 17-19; 20~ Discussed later
Timeline
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1893--Grandpa Nakane arrived in Canada
1933 – Uncle and Obasan got married.
1941--Mother returned to Japan (clue: p.
20 )
1942--Vancouver Hastings Park prison
1945--the bombing of Nagasaki
1951--moved to Granton
1954--the first visit to the coulee (p. 2)
1972--narrative present--Uncle’s death
Japanese Internment in
Canada
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The turn of the century: early immigrants
1941, December 7--the bombing of Pearl Harbor
1942--evacuation of Canadian Japanese (Nikkei)
from the Pacific Coast--the great mass movement
in the history of Canada (Obasan Emily’s Diary;
e.g. 92-93)--21,000 people moved
1945-1949 deportation or 2nd relocation  right
to vote and return to B.C.
More here
Differences between the States & Canada
U.S.: 1913 -- California Alien Land Law prohibited
"aliens ineligible to citizenship" (ie. all Asian
immigrants) from owning land or property, but
permitted three year leases.
April 1942 -- The assembly centers, relocation
centers, and internment camps were set up, and
relocation of Japanese-Americans began.
Internment camps were scattered all over the
interior West, in isolated desert areas of Arizona,
California, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, and
Wyoming.
1944 -- Executive Order 9066 was rescinded by
President Roosevelt,
1946 -- the last of the camps was closed in March.
Differences between the States
and Canada (2)
Canada:
-- Dispersal of family members--men sent to road
camps in the interior of B.C., sugar beet projects
on the Prairies, POW camp in Ontario;
-- not allowed to go back to the West after the War;
-- their properties liquidated.
1.
Differences between the States
and Canada (3)
U.S.
1. 1980 -- President Jimmy Carter signed the
Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians
Act – for investigation
2. 1991 – Bush’s letter of apology
Canada

1980s--redress movement

1988--formal apology to Nikkei+ $21,000 (Cdn.)
to the survivors
Obasan: Time Line & Plot (1)
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1972
|
|
 1954
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Chap 1: 8/9 1972 Present Cecil, Alberta
--1954 Granton  1951(the bombing of
Nagasaki) —
 Chap 2: 9/13, 1972 Uncle’s death
 Chap 3: back to Obasan’s house, question
about the mother
 Chap 4: [photos]  family histories (stone
bread)
Obasan: Time Line & Plot (2)
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1972
|
|
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1941
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Vancouver 
Days
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Chap 5: Obasan in the attic, memory as spider
Chap 6: nightmare
Chap 7: Emily’s package—her last visit and the
question if Naomi wants to know “everything”
Chap 8: Obasan lady of the leftovers
Chap 9: starts to remember- from the photo to
memories of the house p. 50 —
Chap 10: Momotaro
Chap 11: episodes of the white chicken and Old
Man Gower
Chap 12: —separation starts—the mother first;
Chap 13: preparation to leave;
Chap 14: bath with Obasan; Emily’s diary (-110)
Discussion Questions
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How are Naomi, Obasan and Uncle, as
survivors of the collective trauma of
internment, presented at the beginning of
the novel?
How does Naomi start to remember?
The importance of The Kato and
Nakane’s family photo presented?
What can be the significance of the
opening epigraphs?
Japanese-Canadians:
(1) Not Enemies Alien

Uncle --Uncle Sam, Chief Sitting Bull) ([1] 2);
-- adaptation to new lives and mixture of two cultures [3] p.
13 stone bread, margarine as Alberta;
 Father –like Mandrake the magician
 Obasan -- an old woman in
Mexico, France, as “the true and rightful owner of
the earth.) ([3] 15)
Japanese-Canadians: (1) Displaced,
aging and family life disrupted
Uncle – displaced from the sea and his fishing
boats([3]13), forever severed from the sea ([4] 22)
 Uncle and Obasan – old and fixated
(uncle --1, Obasan and Gramdma N – [4]17
the house is old) ([3] 15)
 Emily and Naomi – no love life ([2] 8)
 Naomi-- tense ([2] 7);
-- her thirst for knowledge ([1] 3)
-- rational control over her emotion: her mind
separated from herself ([2] 9).
 Stephen in constant flight ([3] 14)
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The Past: Different Treatments
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How do the three generations each deal with the
past differently?
 Obasan--issei—
• language of grief--silence ([3] 14);
• ancient; accepting death;
• live with the past ([3]11, 14-16; [5] 25-26 ),

Emily--nisei—
• energetic, visionary ([2] 8),
• To Naomi: “You have to remember…Denial is
gangrene” [壞疽] (49-50)
• [later]“word warrior” (32), “white blood cells” (34)
• Asserting her Canadian identity--“This is my own, my
native land”
Different Generations on
Language and Silence

“To the issei, honor and dignity is
expressed through silence, the twig bending
with the wind….The sansei view silence as
a dangerous kind of cooperation with the
enemy.”
--Joy Kagawa in an interview with Susan Yim
Historical Reconstructions –
[more next time]
 Three ways
of dealing with
memories:
• Obasan: ancient woman who stays in
history
• --can be consumed by the past,
• --can make use of the leftovers
• Emily: “The past is the future” p. 42
• Naomi: “Crimes of history . . . can stay in
history” p. 41
Naomi’s thirst and
fragmentary memories
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“Why do we come here every year?”
“Why did my mother not return?”
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-- her thirst for knowledge ([1] 3)
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Transferred to her uncle ([3]14)
Photographic memories –
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Older relatives described with humor –like advance
guard
• Grandfather Kato: the toes of his boots to "angle
down like a ballet dancer's" (17)
• Grandmother Kato: "nostrils wide in her startled
bony face" (17).
Naomi’s Photographic memories
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Family photo:
• Grandma Nakane's "plump hands" and "soft
lap“
• Grandfather Nakane—like Napoleon.
• "look[ing] straight ahead, carved and rigid, with
their expressionless Japanese faces and their
bodies pasted over with Rule Britannia " (18).
• Mother – beautiful, fragile; Emily – short
waved hair

The House –chap 9
Naomi’s Photographic memories
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Family as a knit blanket, moth-eaten
Uncle and Father’s – the boat – the
relocation.
Memories – in a whirlpool of protective
silence (end of chap 9)  epigraph
Imagery of Stone & Sea
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What is the significance of the stone
imagery?
The bible--“a white stone”--”a new name
written”
epigraph--“The word is stone.”
Uncle’s stone bread
the coulee/ the ocean/ uncle and Chief
Sitting Bull/ the family as a knit blanket
(24-25)
coulee - 深谷
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Racism,
Trauma,
& Survival
in Different “Languages”-Obasan Chaps 5-14
Kate Liu
Outline
Enemy Aliens vs. Survivors
1. Discussion Questions
2. Memory and Language:
• Memory of Different Forms -- Aya Obasan, Aunt
Emily, and Naomi
• Different Languages
3. Family Togetherness vs. Fragmentation
4. Wartime Examples of Racism
• [Children’s] Responses to Trauma
• [Adults] Emily’s
Discussion Questions
1.
2.
3.
Memory and Language: How do Emily,
Naomi and Aya Obasan deal with their
grief, and memories of separation and
unfair treatments?
Family and Fragmentation: How is the
extended Japanese family depicted?
Where do we see them broken apart?
Racism: Examples of Wartime Racism?
The government’s justification and the
responses to it of children or adults?
I. Memory and Languages
Obasan Aya

Live with the past
• The house is old, items like her bodily parts, the
house like “[3] her blood and bones” (15)
• the attic: ([5] 25)
• her “ancient” body like “long extinct
vocalnoes” ([14]78)
• “The language of grief is silence. She has
learned it well, its idioms and nuances. Over the
years, silence within her small body has grown
large and powerful” (14)
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Protective Silence;
(Aya vs.) Emily
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How different my two aunts are. One lives in
sound, the other in stone. Obasan’s language
remains deeply underground but Aunt Emily, BA,
MA, is a word warrior. She’s a crusader, a little
old gray-haired Mighty Mouse, a Bachelor of
Advanced Activists and General Practitioner of
Just Causes. ([7] 32)
 Emily: wrote letters; changed “Japanese race” to
“Canadian citizen” (33)
 “We’re gluing our tongues back on. . . . We have
to deal with this while we remember it. If we don’t
we’ll pass our anger down in our genes. It’s the
children who’ll suffer” (36).
Aya vs. Emily
Aya

Uncle: Gratitude ([7]42)
 “everyone someday dies”
([8] 44-45)
 Photos everywhere –
shows Naomi her
mother’s photo
Emily
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Presents her a parcel of
letters, documents, her diary
“The past is the future”
([7]42)
Naomi:
-- Why not leave the dead to bury the dead (42)
-- memories are to be forgotten (45)
-- All right, Aunt Emily, all right! The house then…([9] 50)
Two Different Languages
One lives in sound, the other in stone.
Obasan Aya’s: stony
silence; remains
deeply underground
 Speech hides like an
animal in a storm (3)
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Aunt Emily– a word
warrior, a bulldozer,
with “army, navy, air
force” of letters (32)
-- “To attend its voice… is to embrace its absence. But I
fail the task. The word is stone.”
-- “My fingers tunnel through a tangle of roots till the
grass stands up from my knuckles…I search the earth and
the sky with a thin but persistent thirst” (3)
-- Emily crusading still, while the others “seek the safety
of invisibility” ([7] 32)
Two Languages of Eyes
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Grandma Kato, Obasan– a stare is an
invasion (47)
Emily – visually bilingual
Naomi’s Denial of History –
chap 7
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"The very last thing in the world I was
interested in talking about was our
experiences during and after World War II"
(33);
"Crimes of history,...can stay in history.
What we need is to concern ourselves with
the injustices of today" (41);
"Why not leave the dead to bury the dead?"
"Life is so short,...the past so long.
Shouldn't we turn the page and move on?"
(42).
Review: Naomi’s process of
remembering
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Performing yearly ritual without knowing
why
Photographic memories –connected to the
past thru’ fragments (53)
• -- of the two families, of the father and uncle,
• -- of herself and her mother  two languages
of the eyes, two cultures ([9] 47)
2. Family Togetherness vs.
Fragmentation
The Past in Naomi’s memory:

Chap 9: Photograph
• two languages;
• two spaces -- home and outside  chap 11
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The house and life in Vancouver
• bathing -- burning but relaxing water;
Grandma’s resourcefulness (48-49)
• a collage of images (50)
• Mother, father and Stephen
Naomi and
goldfish
• The past—drowning whirlpool, Naomi as a
fragment of fragments
Two languages of eyes 
Racial Differences
Chap 11 –
 the mother’s matter-of-fact eyes (59); “negation
of good in the past tense”
 Old Man Gower episode:
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• Her powerlessness – like “a small animal” cannot move,
cannot say no. (63; snow white 64)
• Negative consequences of silence: Noami’s quietness;
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• Her complicity –”terror and exhilaration” wecomes
it (65)
• her sense of guilt
Old Man Gower – the one to take over their house
(Chap 12 )
Question 2: the significance of the
story Momotaro?
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Both Canadian and Japanese;
family care and Maintaining honor in
displacement;
The other fairy-tales:
• Snow White: end of Chap 11
• Humpty Dumpty end of Chap 15;
• Goldilock chap 17,
• All revisions of the fairy-tales show the child’s way of
apprehending racism and displacement
• the chicken episode Chap 11
Other Influences of Racism
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The family dispersed –
Noami’s sense of guilt and fear ([13] 73)
Her repression of past memories
Noami’s dreams: first one [6] 28-30; second
one: [11] 59-
3. Examples of Wartime Racism
Wartime Racism
e.g. Against Jews in Germany and
everywhere,
e.g. In-between mainland Chinese and
Japanese
Canadian Government’s
Rhetoric
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4/8 newspaper – Japanese naval officers
(94)
Nisei as "enemy aliens";
 prison camps as "Interior Housing
Projects"
Canadian Government’s
Rhetoric

In 1944, Prime Minister William Lyon
Mackenzie King claimed that it was “the
sound policy and the best policy for the
Japanese Canadians themselves … to
distribute their numbers as widely as
possible throughout the country where they
will not create feelings of racial hostility”
(qtd Miki 40).
Emily’s Diary
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Confiscation –radio, curfew, all of their landed
properties
Evacuation to work camp or Hasting Park– Sam
sent away; the Morii gang 91
3/2, 1942 everyone has to leave; curfew for
Japanese, men sent away in unheated cars,
Treated like animals 100; Jap images 101
Emily bound for Toronto, Aya and the kids for
Slocan 108-109
Different Responses
• Naomi and Stephen’s responses 80-81; 89
Stephen limp
• Nisei’s p. 81; 86 keeping faith to being bitter.
Emily—becomes numb, lost, keeps writing and
making sense of what’s happening …
• Mark ‘s letter – about music and flowers 105
Survival and Fragmentation

Beginning of Chap 15
“We are the hammers and chisels in the hands of
would be sculptors, battering the spirit of the
sleeping mountain. We are the chips and sand, the
fragments of fragments tha fly like arrows from
the heart of the rock. We are the silences that
speak from stone. We are the despised. . .
We are those pioneers who cleared the bush and the
forest with our hands, the gardeners tending and
attending the soil with our tenderness . . .
References

Japanese Canadian Internment
http://www.lib.washington.edu/subject/Canada/int
ernment/intro.html
 A History of the Japanese-American Internment
http://www.fatherryan.org/hcompsci/
 Analysis of two apology letters
http://www.imdiversity.com/villages/asian/Article
_Detail.asp?Article_ID=3267
References

Japanese Canadian Internment
http://www.lib.washington.edu/subject/Canada/int
ernment/intro.html
 A History of the Japanese-American Internment
http://www.fatherryan.org/hcompsci/
 Analysis of two apology letters
http://www.imdiversity.com/villages/asian/Article
_Detail.asp?Article_ID=3267
Note

Kinjiro Ninomiya，也就是中文的二宮金次
郎，二宮金次郎原名二宮尊德，一七八七年
出生於今日本神奈川縣，二宮十四歲時喪父
，十六歲喪母，因為貧困而兄弟離散，獨自
過著辛苦的日子。二宮深知只有讀書才能使
人生豐盛，並能以所學解決問題，於是每天
勞動之餘，挑燈夜讀，每每通宵達旦，終能
藉所學得的知識為民眾謀福利，深受民眾敬
仰。
Japanese Internment in
Canada

The turn of the century: early immigrants
(beginning; 8:00-11:40)
 1941, December 7--the bombing of Pearl Harbor
 1942--evacuation of Canadian Japanese (Nikkei)
from the Pacific Coast--the great mass movement
in the history of Canada (Obasan 92-93)--21,000
people moved (clip 2 13:00 – 17:30 confiscation;
clip 3 relocation)
 1945-1949 deportation or 2nd relocation  right
to vote and return to B.C. (clip 4 22:00-) (Also
chap 14 of the novel)