Speaker: Ms. Linda Ohama

Topic: “An Alien’s Dream: Immigrants’ Struggle for Acceptance and Belonging”

Location: Aoyama Campus, Room TL301 (In the former AGU Junior College)

Date: Tuesday, June 24, 2025 (Tuesday)

Time: 1:20 PM to 2:50 PM (3rd period) [Come to the classroom early as the talk will start on time!)

We are pleased to bring back to AGU a dynamic speaker we have hosted several times in the past and whose message could not be more relevant than in today’s social and pollical climate. A third generation (Sansei) Japanese Canadian artist and filmmaker, Linda Ohama has worked as an exhibiting visual artist and as a documentary filmmaker. She produced and directed the award-winning film “Obachan’s Garden” (http://culturevulture.net/film/obachans-garden/) and the documentary “Tohoku no Shingetsu”–“New Moon Over Tohoku”–which concerns the experiences of people in Tohoku during, and after, the earthquake/ tsunami/ nuclear disaster of March 11, 2011.

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Linda Ohama writes:

My father was a 25-year-old student at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver) with a dream to become a lawyer one day. He was a ‘nisei’ (second generation) born in Canada. His father and mother were both born in Japan. Like any university student, he worked hard to earn his tuition and studied hard to get good grades. He was also an officer in the Royal Military Cadets for Canada.

In the spring of 1942, his dreams became a nightmare the day he was ‘kicked out’ of university and lost his right to earn a degree. Why?

The government imposed the War Measures Act to intern 21,000 Canadians of Japanese ancestry and he became an ‘enemy alien’. (The U.S. government also used a similar Alien Enemies Act in their 1942 forced internment of 120,000 American Japanese.)

Recently, the American government has used the Alien Enemies Act once again and the dreams of families, university students, and people who fled violence in their country of origin, like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, are broken.

Through my work as a documentary filmmaker, I have explored the loss of dreams caused by social and political injustices, hoping to inspire deeper understanding, advocacy for change and the hope for a better way of being. I will share some of my personal experiences and research in my presentation.

Post script:

My father received an honorary degree and formal apology from the University of British Columbia in 2012, seven years after his death. I received the degree on behalf of his dream. Today, my ‘yonsei’ daughter (my father’s granddaughter) is a practising lawyer who has earned respect for her human justice work representing the rights of marginalized women, children and groups in Canada. She also teaches law at the University of British Columbia.

Sometimes, one man’s dream takes several generations to be fulfilled.

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To be even better prepared for the lecture, you may wish to download and read an article reviewing “Obachan’s Garden” that Gregory Strong contributed to the Daily Yomiuri. The article appeared on November 14, 2002, as the film was being screened throughout Japan for the first time. The article is followed by some skimming and scanning, and comprehension questions. You can watch “Obachan’s Garden” in its entirety at: https://www.nfb.ca/film/obachans_garden/.

Finally, it would useful for students and teachers who plan to attend the lecture to do some background reading on the internment of Japanese by the Canadian government during the war. You can check out Wikipedia’s page on Japanese internment and an entry in the Canadian Encyclopedia about the history of the Japanese in Canada. 

Other articles that will help you to prepare for the talk:

‘Very dangerous’: Japanese Americans warn of Trump’s use of Alien Enemies Act

The Alien Enemies Act Paved the Way for Japanese American Incarceration. Let’s Keep It in the Past.

4 things to know about the Alien Enemies Act and Trump’s efforts to use it

Photograph showing the Murakami Visitor center in Steveston, a small community near Vancouver, the former home of Asayo Murakami (Linda Ohama’s Obachan).