Vancouver Rashomon

This book is about the Japanese Canadian Redress Movement in Vancouver B.C. between 1947–1988, the controversies that damaged it between 1989-1994, and some adverse consequences that remain even today in 2022. Many of these stories are untold in other Japanese Canadian redress books. Much evidentiary material has been researched and referenced to explain my views and to feature as many of the grass-roots activists as I could practically mention.

Like the intrigue in a samurai movie combined with an Agatha Christie sleuth solving the great mystery and presenting a reveal at the end, I describe the plots, clues, and deductions as I gathered them. Popular slang and songs came to mind while writing the chapters so I’ve included some of them in the titles to give the reader a better feeling of those times also.

The original goal was to work with the committee who published Japanese Canadian Redress: The Toronto Story in 2000, but that didn’t happen because the Vancouver Story was much more heated and too raw to write about back then. The truths behind the redress movement stories appeared shrouded in confusion, fear, silence, and coverup that took decades to sort out—thus the origin of my book title: Vancouver Rashomon: Redress Stories.