The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 18 | Issue 6 | Number 4 | Article ID 5382 | Mar 15, 2020

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Canada's “History Wars”: The “Comfort Women” and theNanjing Massacre

Satoko Oka Norimatsu

This article is based on a talk that Satoko OkaNorimatsu gave at the seminar “The ‘HistoryWars’ and the ‘Comfort Woman’ Issue:Rev i s i on i sm and the R igh t -w ing inContemporary Japan, U.S., and Canada,”(https://ckr.iar.ubc.ca/events/event/dr-tomomi-yamaguchi-and-satoko-oka-norimatsu-the-history-wars-and-the-comfort-woman-issue-r e v i s i o n i s m - a n d - t h e - r i g h t - w i n g - i n -contemporary-japan-and-the-u-s/) held at theInstitute of Asian Research, the University ofBritish Columbia (Vancouver, BC), hostedjointly by the Centre of Korean Research andthe Centre for Japanese Research, onNovember 21, 2019.

Event poster by the Centre for KoreanResearch and the Centre for Japanese

Research, University of British Columbia(https://ckr.iar.ubc.ca/events/event/dr-tomomi-y

amaguchi-and-satoko-oka-norimatsu-the-history-wars-and-the-comfort-woman-issue-

revisionism-and-the-right-wing-in-contemporary-japan-and-the-u-s/)

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Introduction

I am going to discuss the “history wars” inCanada, 2015 – 2018, building on TomomiY a m a g u c h i ’ s i l l u s t r a t i o n(https://apjjf.org/2020/6/Yamaguchi.html) ofJapanese history revis ionism and itsintervention seeking to block overseasmemorialization of Imperial Japan’s system ofmilitary sex slavery.

In 2015, Burnaby, a city of about 220,000people to the east of Vancouver, planned toerect a “Girl Statue for Peace,” in Central Park,one of the city’s public parks, in conjunctionwith its Korean sister-city Hwaseong. The plan,however, met heavy opposition from theConsulate-General of Japan in Vancouver, theright-wing within Japan, and local residentsinfluenced by them. Hwaseong City’s statueeventually found a home across the continent,at a Korean-Canadian facility in Toronto.

From 2016 to 2018, members of provinciallegislatures of Ontario, Manitoba, and BritishColumbia attempted to establish December 13as the Nanjing Massacre Commemorative Day(NMCD), as 2017 marked the 80th anniversaryof the atrocity in which hundreds of thousandsof Chinese POWs and civilians were massacredand women and girls were raped and murderedby the Imperial Japanese Army that conqueredNanjing and surrounding areas. These effortsfaced adversary pressures from the Japanesegovernment and Japanese nationalists in Japanand Canada, but on October 26, 2018 SooWong, a member of the Ontario Legislature,succeeded in gaining unanimous support forthe NMCD motion (Motion 66). At the federallevel, on November 28, 2018, a member ofParliament, Jenny Kwan, tabled a similarmotion. It did not pass, but Prime MinisterJustin Trudeau recognized the importance forCanadians to remember this history.

I was not just an observer of these events but aparticipant in the 2015 debate over theComfort Women statue in Burnaby and the

2018 effort to proclaim a federal NanjingMassacre Commemorative Day. In 2015, Iinitially sought to provide a “bridge” betweenmembers of the Korean-Canadian communitywho wanted to build the statue and members ofthe Japanese-Canadian community who wantedto prevent it. Eventually, I became part of the“Peace Statue Committee,” which the Korean-Canadians formed, including members of theJapanese-Canadian, Chinese-Canadian andother ethnic communities. In 2018, I formedthe Japanese-Canadians Supporting NanjingMassacre Commemorative Day to counter theJapanese government and Japanese nationalistopposition.

My position was two-fold. One was to opposeopposition to the commemoration: First, Ithought it would be shameful for people withJapanese ancestry to actively opposememorialization of Imperial Japan’s dark past.Second, I felt compelled to condemn thehistorical denial that was behind suchopposition. Could we imagine German-Canadians staging an organizational protestagainst commemoration of the Holocaust inCanada, claiming that the historical claims ofthe event were groundless? It was necessary todemonstrate that some Japanese-Canadians1

were engaged in such nationalistic oppositionand historical denial.

2014-2015: The “Comfort Women Statue”Plan in Burnaby, British Columbia

The Korean War Memorial at Central Park,

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Burnaby. Photo by author.

The planned site for the “Comfort WomenStatue” for Burnaby, BC was on the westernedge of the 86-acre Central Park, facing theBoundary Road , wh ich borders thene ighbour ing c i t y o f Vancouver . AMemorandum of Understanding was signedbetween Burnaby and Hwaseong in the fall of2014, and plans were underway to build thestatue near the Korean War Memorial, whichhonours the 36 servicemen from BritishColumbia who died in the Korean War(1950-53).

According to the Sankei Newspaper,2 theJapanese government was aware of this plan asearly as September of 2014, but the knowledgebecame public when the Hankyoreh Newspaperin Korea reported “Hwaseong City, of GyeonggiProvince is going to erect a ‘Girl Statue forPeace’ that honours the victims of the Japanesemilitary sex slavery and wishes for world peace,in its Canadian sister-city Burnaby,” in itsMarch 6, 2015 edition.3

Japanese rightists reacted swiftly. NadeshikoAction, a women’s right-wing group, based inJapan, which denies the history of Japanesemilitary sex slavery, called on the public tosupport a petition campaign opposing thestatue on Change.org.4 The petition collectedover 13,000 signatures by mid-April (from thecomments section, it appears that mostsupporters were from Japan). I t a lsoencouraged sending emails to the City ofBurnaby by providing five letter templates inEnglish.5 As a result, thousands of emailsswarmed the inbox of the Burnaby Mayor’sOffice.

Otaka Miki, a conservative journalist alertedher audience on the Internet-based ChannelSakura by saying that the “innocent Japanesechildren will be bullied” as a result of the“propaganda of fabricated history” by

“Koreans.” She called on Japanese residents inBurnaby if they were willing to cooperate, to“get in touch with the Japanese people who areactive in Canada.”6

Otaka also mentioned that the Change.orgpetition and the email templates to BurnabyCity were “kindly prepared by YamamotoYumiko,” the founder of Nadeshiko Action, notbeing shy at all about disclosing the fact thatthe opposition against the statue in Burnabywas initiated and controlled by the right-winghistorical revisionists in Japan, not by localresidents. On April 1, 2015, Japaneseconservative newspaper Sankei Shimbun ran abig front-page story on the Burnaby statue planin its “History War” series.7 It is remarkablethat a national newspaper in a country of over120 million people saw such newsworthiness ina memorial statue proposed for a city of220,000, across the Pacific Ocean.

Examples of Vancouver Shinpo runningfront-page articles on the opposition

movement against the Comfort Womenstatue. Photo by author

By contrast, no Canadian mainstream mediatook any interest in this except a report or twoin Burnaby’s local newspaper Burnaby Now. Itreported that on March 18, 2015, about twodozen residents of Japanese ancestry “showedup at the monthly Parks, Recreation and

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Culture Commission meeting to protest theprospect of a statue commemorating ‘comfortwomen.’”8 Otherwise, local discussion of theissue was almost exclusively conducted inJapanese, with the weekly Vancouver Shinpoeffectively acting as the mouthpiece of the localopposition group called Zo Hantai Kisei DomeiKai [Alliance for Opposing the Statue –hereafter the “Opposition Alliance”],9 led byGordon Kadota, a Japanese-Canadianbusinessman.

Nevertheless, there were multiple-levelpressures against the statue plan in Burnaby.On the government front, the “SpecialCommittee for Recovering Japan’s Honour andTrust”10 of the ruling Liberal Democratic Partyof Japan, led by former Minister of ForeignAffairs Nakasone Hirofumi, on April 2 wasbriefed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs(MOFA). MOFA explained that it had been“collecting information since September of2014, and making proactive, though ‘discreet,’efforts to stop the erection (of the statue),”such as assisting Burnaby’s Japanese sister cityKushiro’s effort, and working with the Japan-Canada Association and Japanese businesses inCanada.11

Indeed, I learned that opposition meetingswere being held at the official residence of theConsul General of Japan in Vancouver, and thatKushiro city was threatening Burnaby city withcancellation of events to commemorate the50th anniversary of the sister-city relationship.Mayor of Burnaby Derek Corrigan also receiveddirect pressure from Okada Seiji, then ConsulGeneral of Japan, and Gordon Kadota, leader ofthe opposition group who had close ties withthe Consul General.12

Opposition group Kisei Domei’s petitionform. About 1,300 signatures were

collected from mid-April to mid-May of2015.

There were peer pressures as well. Kadotainitiated a local petition campaign thatcollected physical signatures. Petitioncirculated among local community groups,sports and cultural activities such as marshalarts and tea ceremony, with this kind ofpressure: “If you are Japanese, you must sign.”When I met Kadota for the first time on April10, 2015, he did not hide his surprise that I wasnot supporting opposition to the statue, being aJapanese-Canadian. Since I was vocal in mycriticism of the opposition, soon rumors spreadamong the Japanese immigrants’ communityand among the Internet-right that I was “aKorean (chosen-jin)” and “anti-Japan (han-nichi)”.

However, as Kadota admitted in his VancouverShinpo interview on April 9, 2015, participantsof the campaign against the Comfort Womenstatue were almost exclusively “Japanese-Canadians who use Japanese in everyday life,and Japanese-Canadians who use English ineveryday life do not even know such a debate isgoing on.” In fact, quite a few English-speakingJapanese-Canadians reacted differently -- whilemany Japanese-speaking Japanese Canadiansregarded the Comfort Women as a defamationof Japan and the Japanese, these second- orthird-generation Japanese Canadians saw it asan expression of historical memory that was

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important to another ethnic group that carriespainful war experience. They thought suchexpression deserved public recognition just asthey, Japanese-Canadians who suffered theinjustice of war-time incarceration, did whenthe Canadian government apologized and paidsymbolic compensation to the victims and tothe Japanese-Canadian community in 1988.

Several second- and third-generation Japanese-Canadians and I drafted an article to informEnglish-speaking Japanese Canadians about thediscussion within the Japanese-speakingcommunity, and submitted it to The Bulletin(Geppo), a monthly journal whose mainaudience is English-speaking JapaneseCanadians. The article was never printeddespite our repeated inquiries.

It is estimated that about two-thirds of thecitizens of Japanese ancestry in Canada useEnglish as their primary language, and aboutone-third Japanese. While Gordon Kadota’sOpposition Alliance claimed to represent themajority of Japanese Canadians, the English-speaking Japanese Canadians, who were themajority of the Japanese Canadian community,were hardly given an opportunity to even learnabout the debate.

Here is an excerpt from the article that wasnever published, in which I translated theOpposition Alliance’s rationale for opposing thestatue, from the May 7, 2015 edition ofVancouver Shinpo.

It is quite inappropriate to bring a1.Comfort Women statue, which contains asensitive political issue between twocountries, to a third country (Canada). It is significantly inappropriate to place a2.controversial statue in a public facilityfor citizens and immigrants who areadopting multiculturalism and livingharmoniously. It will have a major impacton the lives of citizens.

A Comfort Women statue has already3.been erected in Glendale, in the UnitedStates, and the community has beendivided to the extent that it appearsirreparable, and bullying of Japanesechildren has been intensifying. We mustnever follow in their footsteps. There are so many things that we want to4.say, due to misunderstanding of the factson the Korean side and differences inhistorical understanding, but we willrefrain from saying them. The reason isthat even i f we ta lk about thesedifferences here and now, it is unlikelythat any productive discussion will beheld, and it will be difficult to achieve ouroriginal goal of “not allowing the statueto be erected”. The target of our action is the Burnaby5.City Council: to act so that they will notapprove a Comfort Women statue or anystatue or monument that resembles suchin a public facility.

This excerpt contains the ubiquitously usedrationale for Japanese nationalists’ oppositionagainst memorialization of the history ofJapanese military sex slavery worldwide, asTomomi Yamaguchi described, such as the“bullying of Japanese children” in Point 3, forwhich little evidence has been provided, andhistory denial in Point 4 as in pointing to thehistory of Japanese military sex slavery as“misunderstanding of the facts on the Koreanside.”

With hundreds of emails, letters, and phonecalls and a petition campaign overwhelmingBurnaby,13 Mayor Derek Corrigan realized thathe was “naïve” about the potential conflict thatthis issue could entail.14 On April 15, 2015, theday after Gordon Kadota and three othermembers met the mayor, Corrigan issued astatement that the city would consider a planthat would be mutually agreeable to both

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Korean- and Japanese- Canadian communitiesin the region.15 This was interpreted aseffective suspension of the plan and SankeiShimbun reported i t on Apri l 18 as amanifestation of “success” of the oppositionefforts.16

Given Mayor Corrigan’s statement, the “PeaceStatue Committee,” then mostly consisting ofKorean-Canadians who wished to build thestatue, Gordon Kadota representing theOpposition Alliance, and some Japanese-Canadians who supported the project includingmyself met on April 27. It was an amicablemeeting in which we agreed to work togetheron the project. After the meeting, however,Kadota insisted on excluding the Japanese-Canadians who were supportive of the statuefrom the project, resulting in a strong objectionfrom the Peace Statue Committee. Anothermeeting was planned for May 7, but Kadotacancelled it at the last minute. From that pointthere was no indication from Kadota or othermembers of the Opposition Alliance ofwillingness to work with the Peace StatueCommittee.

Over the summer of 2015, the Peace StatueCommittee, including not just KoreanCanadians but Canadians of various otherethnic backgrounds, including European,Japanese, Filipino, and Chinese, met, andtalked about the statue plan, but it nevermaterialized. In the mean time, there was apossibility of placing the statue within thepremises of Hannam Market, a Koreansupermarket in Burnaby, but the strata councilof the shopping complex eventually votedagainst it. In the end, the statue donated fromHwaseong City found its home on the otherside of the continent, at the Korean-CanadianCultural Association in Toronto and it wasunveiled on November 18, 2015.

The Toronto statue was the first ComfortWomen statue erected in Canada, and the 3rdin the world outside of Korea, after Glendale,

California (July 2013) and Southfield, Michigan(August, 2014). While the Glendale statue wasbuilt in a public park, the Southfield statue wasbuilt on private property, as the effort to find apublic location for it was thwarted by theJapanese government and corporations.

Statue at the Korean Canadian CulturalAssociation in Toronto, Ontario. Photo by

Tomomi Yamaguchi

2015 – 2016: Japanese historicalrevisionism efforts in Canada

Since around then, Japanese historicalrevisionists continued their efforts to increasetheir influence in Canada, as one of the “mainbattlefields” of their “history wars.” TorontoSeiron no kai, a group of right-wing JapaneseCanadians, established in August 2015, hasorganized talks by right-wing pundits fromJapan, such as Takahashi Sh iro , 1 7 aconservative education scholar and a keypundit of the Japan Conference (Nippon Kaigi),Tokunaga Shinichi, a lead attorney for theAsahi-Glendale Lawsuit, and Jason Morgan,18 anAmerican instructor at Reitaku University inChiba, Japan. These talks highlighted denial ofJapanese military sex slavery and the NanjingMassacre.19

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Poster for the August 25, 2016 event bythe Toronto Seiron no kai, with Takahashi

Shiro and Tokunaga Shinichi as guestspeakers.

The rightward move in the Japanese-Canadiancommunity in Toronto reached as far as theannual peace event organized by the HiroshimaNagasaki Day Coalition, a citizens’ peace groupin Toronto. On August 6 every year, the groupcommemorates the history of the atomic-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki of 1945.Part of the event is the lantern ceremony, inwhich participants float lanterns with messagesfor peace, in tribute to the tradition inHiroshima on the a-bomb memorial day. Whatsurprised members of the Coalition at the 2016event was that a lantern contributed by oneparticipant said, “Abolish Article 9,” that is,calling for abolition of the war-renunciation

clause of the Japanese constitution, and “TheNanjing Massacre was fake!” The Coalitionmember who found the lantern destroyed it,but took a picture of it for the record.

A history denial message found at theLantern Ceremony in Toronto, August 6,2016. Photo provided by Yusuke Tanaka

On November 17, 2016, a right-wing politicianSugita Mio, who became internationally knownfor her anti-LGBT comment in the August 2018edition of Shincho 45, 2 0 came to JohnJunkerman’s screening and director talk ofOkinawa: The Afterburn, held at the Downtowncampus of Simon Fraser University, which Ihelped organize.21 Sugita was at that time afreelance writer, between her loss in theDecember 2014 Lower House election and hercomeback in the October 2017 election,engaged with various right-wing historicaldenial activities.

Sugita’s presence at the Vancouver event onlybecame known when she reported it in hercolumn in the on-line version of SankeiShimbun weeks later.22 She wrote that she“heard about an anti-Japan meeting inVancouver” from her supporters living in theregion, which was one reason why she came to

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Vancouver, as well as her interest in theBurnaby comfort women statue debate theprevious year. During the film event, she hadtaken photo shots of myself and anothercolleague Tatsuo Kage, a respected historianand human-rights activist, and withoutpermission, displayed the photos in herappearance in another well-known right-wingpundit Sakurai Yoshiko’s Internet channel,23 inwhich she reported what she called “anti-Japan” activities in Canada, including the localArticle 9 peace group that Kage and I are partof.

The Simon Fraser University film eventOkinawa: The Afterburn with director John

Junkerman. Sugita Mio was attending.Photo by author

2 0 1 6 - 1 8 : N a n j i n g M a s s a c r eCommemorative Day debates

The second major theatre of the Japanese“history wars” in Canada was the contentionover moves by some Canadian politicians toestablish December 13 as Nanjing MassacreCommemorative Day (NMCD), beginning in theprovince of Ontario, where approximately 14million, more than a third of Canada’spopulation, live. In fact, official commemorationof the Nanjing Massacre in Canada was notnew. In 2012, Rob Ford, Mayor of Toronto,Ontario’s capital proclaimed December 13 as

“Nanking Recognition Day” to mark the 75thanniversary of the Nanjing Massacre, withoutnotable interference from Japanese nationalistsor those associated with them.

Proclamation of “Nanking RecognitionDay” by Mayor Rob Ford of the city of

Toronto, December 13, 2012.

However, when Soo Wong, a member of theLegislative Assembly of Ontario introduced Bill79 on December 5 , 2016 ca l l ing forestablishment of December 13 as NMCD,negative responses swiftly surfaced, both fromthe right-wing in Japan but also Japanese-Canadian organizations in Canada such as theNational Association of Japanese Canadians(NAJC) and the Japanese Canadian CulturalCentre (JCCC). As soon as the Parliament of

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Ontario started deliberating Bill 79,24 David R.Mitsui, President of NAJC published a strongopposition letter to then Ontario’s PremierKathleen Wynne. Mitsui argued that theNanjing Massacre dealt with “matters betweenforeign governments and has nothing to dowith” Ontario, and Bill 79 promotes “hostilitytowards the Japanese Canadian community,”“intolerance,” and will “open the floodgates forothers seeking a platform for incidents thatoccurred outside of this country.”25 The toneand rationale in this letter was similar to thoseof the Opposition Alliance against the comfortwomen statue on the West Coast and to similaropposition to memorialization of Japanesemilitary sex slavery around the world, informedand influenced by the Japanese governmentand Japanese rightists.

Mitsui by this letter meant to represent theNAJC, which he described as the “onlyorganization representing 17 memberassociations across Canada,” but the Japanese-Canadian community was not so homogeneousas he might have wished. Soon dissent rosefrom within NAJC, among members of its YoungLeaders Committee. In February 2017, theyoung leaders submitted a letter “WithdrawNAJC Opposition to Bill 79” to the NationalExecutive Board of NAJC, with signatures by 93Japanese-Canadians.26

The letter states that, “as Japanese, JapaneseCanadian, and Nikkei-identified people, we areprofoundly disturbed and disappointed by ourAssociation’s strong opposition to Bill 79.” Theletter points to the “crucial support that theNAJC received from other groups during theredress movement,” and argues that “thehistory of redress urgently reminds us, asJapanese Canadians, of our responsibility tojoin with others in their struggles for justice.”

The Japanese-Canadian movement to gainapology and compensation from the Canadiangovernment indeed received support fromother ethnic minorities. The December 1987

inaugural issue of Nikkei Voice, a nationalJapanese-Canadian monthly newspaperreported a rally held in Toronto: “Under thebanner ‘Solidarity For Redress’, leaders oftwenty-one national ethnic organizations unitedin display of support for Japanese Canadians ata rally held on October 29 at HarbordCollegiate Institute in Toronto.” According toYusuke Tanaka, a former editor of Nikkei Voice,this solidarity action added fuel to the laststage of the Redress movement,27 which borefruit in September 1988, when Prime MinisterBrian Mulroney formally apologized to thesurvivors of the wartime internment and theirfamilies, and agreed with Art Miki, thenpresident of the National Association ofJapanese Canadians, on the $300 millionsettlement package.28

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From December 1987 inaugural issue ofNikkei Voice (image provided by Yusuke

Tanaka)

Poet Roy Miki, Art Miki’s brother and the

keynote speaker of the October 1987 rallyconcluded, “Our story is not one of isolatedindividuals but of individuals whose story is apart of Canada. I hope the Japanese Canadiancommunity will itself extend support outsidethe community.” True to his words threedecades ago, Roy Miki was among the 93Japanese Canadians who signed on to theyoung leaders’ “Withdraw NAJC Opposition toBill 79” letter, along with Joy Kogawa, anotherinternment survivor known for her literarywork,29 and Setsuko Thurlow, a renownedHiroshima a-bomb survivor and peace activist.But as the campaign progressed, its organizersfelt increasing pressure from within theJapanese Canadian community, and eventuallyhad to remove the names of all signatories sothat these individuals would not faceharassment. NAJC neither responded to thisletter, at least publicly, nor retracted theiropposition against Bill 79.

Ren Ito, one of the young leaders who initiatedthis action later launched another lettercampaign, “Letter to the Premier: JapaneseCanadians for Bill 79,” which collected 100signatures. 3 0 Author Joy Kogawa wasparticularly vocal in her support of the NMCD.In September, 2017, she presented 10 reasonswhy she supported Bill 79 in a Toronto Stararticle.31 These actions by Japanese Canadiansstressed the importance of solidarity with otherminority groups in commemoration of theirwartime suffering and the importance forCanadians of remembering large-scaleatrocit ies just as they remember theHolocaust.

Opposition to Bill 79 from Japan was also farfrom absent. In June, 14 Liberal DemocraticParty members of the Japanese Parliament sentan opinion statement to the Government ofOntario in opposition to Bill 79, expressingconcern for the expected backlash againstJapanese and Japanese Canadians if NMCD wasestablished.32 In May 2017, members of theOntario Legislature received a strange postcard

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from Japan, which seemed to cast doubt on thenumber of victims of the Nanjing Massacre.

A post card sent to members of the OntarioLegislative Assembly from an unknown

sender in Japan, May 2017. Photo providedby Yusuke Tanaka

Amid such controversy, on October 26, 2017,Soo Wong managed to get unanimous supportin the Ontario Legislature for the NMCD, as amotion (Motion 66), not yet as a law. It wasreported to be the first parliamentarycommemoration of Nanjing Massacre in theWest.33 On December 13, members of theOntario Legislature stood for a moment ofsilence. Wong re-introduced the NMCD bill inApril 2018,34 but the chance to win its approval

as a law was lost as she was defeated in theprovincial election two months later. Similarmoves for legislation of NMCD took place in theprovinces of Manitoba and British Columbia, in2017 and 2018 respectively, but they have notresulted in legislation.

On the federal level, Jenny Kwan, a Member ofParliament from the Vancouver-East riding ofBritish Columbia launched a “Petition to theGovernment of Canada to Establish NanjingMassacre Commemorative Day” in the spring of2018.35 I anticipated that the same group ofhistory-denying Japanese nationalists (KiseiDomei) would stage another oppositioncampaign, so at the end of May 2018, I initiateda new group, Japanese Canadians SupportingNanjing Massacre Commemorative Day.

Website(https://nanjingmemory2018.wordpress.com/)

of the Japanese Canadians SupportingNanjing Massacre Commemorative Day

I knew from my own experience that being aJapanese Canadian and supporting such acause would invite heavy name-calling andInternet-trolling by Japanese nationalists andhistory deniers, so we ensured the privacy ofmembers. We had near 100 people signed up,from coast to coast, from all walks of life,including teachers, writers, doctors, students,organic farmers, and artists. There were alsothose who were influential in the JapaneseCanadian community, including a formerpresident of the National Association ofJapanese Canadians, and author Joy Kogawa,

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whose newest book Gently To Nagasaki makesreferral to the war-time Japanese militaryatrocities.

Gordon Kadota’s opposition group was notquiet either.36 This time, they created anEnglish name for their group, “JapaneseCanadian Coalition for Ethnic Unity,” but theJapanese-language Vancouver Shinpo and itswebsite, were again their major platform. Theiropposition reasons were very much the same asbefore --- 1) NMCD will promote hate andintolerance; 2) Do not bring to Canada the one-sided argument about something thathappened 80 years ago between Japan andChina; 3) NMCD will hurt Canada’s relationswith Japan; 4) Do not make Canada anuncomfortable place to live for JapaneseCanadians again; 5) NMCD will lead todiscrimination and prejudice.37 Somehow, theyeliminated a popular rationale, “Japanesechildren will be bullied,” perhaps because theyfigured out by then that they could no longermake their case, with little or no evidence tosupport such a claim.

These pretexts aside, it was evident that one oftheir primary motives for opposition to thecampaign was history denial. On July 11, 2018,the Ethnic Unity group had a large gathering atthe Nikkei National Museum & Culture Centrein Burnaby to strategize their oppositionagainst MP Jenny Kwan’s NMCD campaign.There were numerous history denial commentssuch as “British Columbia’s textbook has areference to the Nanjing Massacre as aFACT!”, “… I don’t think it happened,” “Ifhistorians debated for 80 years and there is nodefinite evidence, what is the point of arguingthe history?”, “Whether Nanjing Massacrehappened or not, that’s not the point… theimportant thing is to quash this bill that JennyKwan is trying to present!” It was trulyunfortunate that at the Nikkei Centre, a placethat carries the memory of WWII JapaneseCanadian internment and is supposed to be asymbol of anti-racism and tolerance, such a

meeting was held, filled with anti-Chinese hateand historical denialism.

The Racial Unity group argues that the NanjingMassacre is a foreign incident that happened ina distant past and has nothing to do withCanada. In fact, Canada does rememberhistorical events outside of Canada. One ofVancouver’s public parks, Seaforth Peace Parkis home to the late Hiroshima hibakushaKinuko Laskey’s statue. It is a peace, anti-nuclear symbol and I have yet to hear a singlecriticism suggesting that it is an Anti-Americansymbol. There are Holocaust education centresacross Canada, and this does not make Canadaan uncomfortable place to live in for GermanCanadians. None of these instigate hate orintolerance; they, instead serve the oppositepurpose, to provide Canadians to learn fromthe painful past in order to create a betterfuture together.

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The Canadian Museum for Human Rightsin Winnipeg. Photo by author

At the Canadian Museum for Human Rights inWinnipeg,3 8 we can study human rightsviolations in and outside Canada, including thefive genocides outside of Canada that havebeen recognized by the Canadian parliament:Armenian Genocide (1915), UkrainianHolomodor (1932-33), Nazi Holocaust(1933-45), Rwandan Genocide (1994), andSrebrenica Genocide in Bosnia (1995). The“Breaking the Silence” section that exhibitsthose histories of genocide states,

“In Canada, people are free to speak openlyabout human rights abuses. Canadians usedthis freedom to draw attention to acts ofextreme violence and inhumanities around theworld. Concerned Canadians have influencedParliament to recognize five mass atrocities asgenocides – deliberate systematic attempts todestroy specific ethnic, racial, religious ornational groups. Through such officialrecognition, Canada speaks out as a nation. Itexposes and condemns horrific crimes thathave been hidden, minimized, or denied.”

This museum in no way presents Canada as aninnocent nation. The “Canadian Journeys,” thelargest gallery of the museum presents dozensof Canadian stories of human rights violations,from those of the Aboriginal Peoples (FirstNations, Métis, and Inuit), notably the IndianResidential Schools, to those of women, sexualminorities, physically challenged, and racialminorities such as the Head Tax imposition onChinese Canadians and the war-t imeincarceration of Japanese Canadians.

The "Canadian Journeys" gallery of theCanadian Museum for Human Rights

With increasing immigration from and tradewith Asian nations, it is only natural thatCanada considers adding Asian cases to itscollective memory of the world genocides.

Whi le the Racial Unity members and

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supporters were writing letters to PrimeMinister Justin Trudeau and all MPs inopposition to the NMCD, the right wing inJapan was attentive to the possibility ofCanada’s federal parliament recognizing theNanjing Massacre for the first time. OnSeptember 19, 2018, a large Nanjing-denierrally “Wake Up Foreign Ministry! NanjingIncident Did Not Happen” was held in Tokyo. Itwas the seventh public talk event of the “Groupfor Pursuing the Truth of the Nanking Battle.”The poster featured four members ofParliament as guest speakers – Sugita Mio(LDP), Nakayama Nariaki (Party of Hope),Harada Yoshiaki (LDP), and Watanabe Shu(Democratic Party for the People).39

Poster for the "Wake Up Foreign Ministry!The Nanking Incident Didn't Happen"

event, September 19, 2018

Where the history of Japanese military sexslavery is concerned, the current Japanesegovernment denies government or militarycoercion and the notion of sex slavery itself, butwhere the Nanjing Massacre is concerned, theJapanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs states“The Government of Japan believes that itcannot be denied that following the entrance ofthe Japanese Army into Nanjing in 1937, thekilling of a large number of noncombatants,looting and other acts occurred. However,there are numerous theories as to the actualnumber of victims, and the Government ofJapan believes it is difficult to determine whichthe correct number is.”40

Although this description is far from sufficient,not referring to the large-scale illegal slaughterof Chinese POWs and the rampant rapes ofwomen and girls, and focussing on theuncertainty of the actual number of deaths, theJapanese government does recognize that theNanjing Massacre occurred. This is the sourceof the Japanese far-rightists’ frustration withthe Ministry of Foreign Affairs, feeding thesentiment behind the title of this rally. Theywant the Ministry to retract its recognition ofthe history.

Although this was a private group’s event, thefact that three incumbent members of theparliament spoke in support of the cause of theevent, including two from the ruling LiberalDemocratic Party, is significant. Canada wasone of the main concerns of this event. HaradaYoshiaki is a notorious Nanjing denier whopublicly called the history a “fabrication.”41 Hewas one of the LDP politicians who sent theopposition letter to the Ontario Legislaturecriticizing NMCD. At the rally, he boasted ofhis efforts such as nudging the Ministry ofForeign Affairs to act, going to Canada himselfto lobby, and sending a young scholar toCanada to press the point that the “NankingIncident didn’t happen.” His handout had a

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detailed description of NMCD developments inCanada, including background information onSoo Wong and Jenny Kwan. Sugita Mio againsingled out my and my colleague’s names todescribe “anti-Japan” activities in Canada.

On November 28, 2018, Jenny Kwan held apress conference at the parliamentary pressgallery in Ottawa, with author Joy Kogawa, andTomoe Otsuki who spoke representing theJapanese Canadians Supporting NMCD. Kwanlater in the day tabled a motion for NMCD inthe Parliament, with the 40,000 signaturessupporting her, but it did not gain theunanimous support that it needed to pass.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in response toKwan’s call for support, did not clarify his own

position on the NMCD, but he acknowledgedthe need for Canadians to remember thevictims of the history.

“Mr. Speaker, of course we deplore the horrificevents that took place in Nanjing 80 years ago.All Canadians can agree that the loss of life andviolence that so many civilians faced shouldnever be forgotten. We will never forget thoseterrible acts. The memory of these victims andsurvivors must be addressed in the true spiritof reconciliation.”42

Although Jenny Kwan’s motion did not pass thistime, it was a historic moment in its own rightfor the prime minister of a third country torecognize the importance of remembering theNanjing Massacre and its victims.

This is the second of a two-part article. Part one, “The ‘History Wars’ and the‘Comfort Woman’ Issue: Revisionism and the Right-wing in Contemporary Japan andthe U.S.” by Tomomi Yamaguchi, is here (https://apjjf.org/2020/6/Yamaguchi.html).

Satoko Oka NORIMATSU is Director of the Peace Philosophy Centre, a peace-educationorganization in Vancouver, Canada, with a widely-read Japanese-English blog(http://peacephilosophy.blogspot.com/) on topics such as peace and justice, war memory andeducation in East Asia, US-Japan relations, US military bases in Okinawa, nuclear issues, andmedia criticism. (View English-language posts only here(http://peacephilosophy.blogspot.ca/search/label/In%20English%20%E8%8B%B1%E8%AA%9E%E6%8A%95%E7%A8%BF).) She is co-author with Gavan McCormack of Resistant Islands:Okinawa Confronts Japan and the United States (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012; an updatedpaperback version was published in the spring of 2018). The Japanese translation is 『沖縄の〈怒 〉－日米への抵抗』（法律文化社, 2013, the Korean translation is 저항하는 섬, 오끼나와:미국과 일본에 맞선 70년간의 기록（창비, 2014）and the Chinese translation is 沖縄之怒　美国同盟下的抗争　（社会科学文献出版社, 2015）. She is also co-author with Oliver Stone andPeter Kuznick of 『よし、戦争につい て話そう。戦争の本質について話をしようじゃないか！(Let's Talk About War. Let's Talk about What War Really Is!)』（金曜日, 2014）. She iseditor, author, and translator of 『正義への責任　世界から沖縄へ(Responsibility for Justice –From the World to Okinawa) Vol 1,2,3』 (Ryukyu Shimpo, 2015, 2016, 2017) and『沖縄は孤立していない　世界から沖縄への声、声、声。(Okinawa Is Not Alone – Voices for Okinawa from theWorld)』(Kinyobi, 2018). She is an Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus editor.

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Notes1 In this essay I use the term Japanese Canadians as a broad category that includes allCanadians of Japanese ancestry. “Canadians” here does not necessarily mean holders ofCanadian citizenship, but more broadly, citizens or residents of Canada. It is estimated thatabout two-thirds of Japanese Canadians have English as their primary language and many ofthe older generation are survivors of the wartime internment and the younger generations aretheir descendants. The remaining approximately one-third have Japanese as a primarylanguage (though they do use Canada’s official languages in daily life) and they include post-war immigrants, what some call shin-issei, and those who have come to call Canada homeafter business, work, study, marriage, etc. brought them to the country. The vast majority oflocal participants of the opposition against the “Comfort Women” statue and the NanjingMassacre Commemorative Day belong to the latter category.2 “カナダ慰安婦像問題　外務省、昨年９月から情報収集　「設置阻止へ積極的働きかけ」も,”Sankei Shimbun, Aril 2, 2015.https://www.sankei.com/politics/news/150402/plt1504020032-n1.html3 “京畿道華城市、カナダ姉妹都市のバーナビー市に慰安婦少女像建立へ,” HankyorehNewspaper, March 6, 2015. http://japan.hani.co.kr/arti/politics/19877.html4 Mayor Derek Corrigan; Comfort Women, Not a statue of peace, a magnet for conflicts. 慰安婦、平和の像あらず、軋轢を引寄せる磁石 Comfort Women, Not a statue of peace, a magnetfor conflicts. カナダBC州バーナビー市慰安婦像設置反対 カナダBC州バーナビー市慰安婦像設置反対,”https://www.change.org/p/comfort-women-not-a-statue-of-peace-a-magnet-for-conflicts-カナダバーナービー市慰安婦像設置反対 This petition page eventually closed with a little over 14,000signatures.5 “【 署名/メール】カナダ バーナビー市 慰安婦像反対！ご協力を！”, Nadeshiko Action,repeatedly updated from March to June, 2015. http://nadesiko-action.org/?page_id=79276 Otaka Miki 【魔都見聞録】カナダ・バーナビー市 慰安婦像反対！ご協力を！[桜H27/3/16]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDoLjkdyT3o&feature=emb_logo7 “慰安婦像　カナダで提案　韓国の姉妹都市　邦人ら反対運動,” Sankei Shimbun, April 1,2015. https://www.sankei.com/world/news/150402/wor1504020004-n1.html8 “Comfort women statue proposal riles group of Japanese Canadians in Burnaby,” BurnabyNow, March 19, 2015.https://www.burnabynow.com/news/comfort-women-statue-proposal-riles-group-of-japanese-canadians-in-burnaby-1.17981899 The full name of the group is 「バーナビー市慰安婦像設置反対期成同盟会」. It is unknownwhether any official English name for the group exists. A literal translation of the group nameis the “Alliance Group Established for the Purpose of Opposing the Erection of a ComfortWomen Statue in Burnaby City.”10 “日本の名誉と信頼を回復するための提言,” The Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, July28, 2015. https://www.jimin.jp/news/policy/128434.html11 “カナダ慰安婦像問題　外務省、昨年９月から情報収集　「設置阻止へ積極的働きかけ」も,” Sankei Shimbun, April 2, 2015.https://www.sankei.com/politics/news/150402/plt1504020032-n1.html

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12 Gordon Kadota passed away on July 31, 2019.13 As Tomomi Yamaguchi describes in her paper, Japanese American veteran Robert Wadawrote a letter of opposition to Mayor Derek Corrigan of Burnaby City. Wada’s letter alsocirculated among the Japanese Canadian community.14 “バーナビー市長に聞く　慰安婦像建立は未定,” Vancouver Shinpo website (dateunknown)http://www.v-shinpo.com/local/1488-110-1624761515 “慰安婦像設置検討を保留,” Vancouver Shinpo, April 23, 2015.16 “慰安婦像設置は「当面保留」　カナダ西部バーナビー市　日系住民の反対奏功,” SankeiShimbun, April 18, 2015.https://www.sankei.com/world/news/150418/wor1504180012-n1.html17 Japan-U.S. Feminist Network for Decolonization is a useful English-language guide toJapanese history revisionists’ activities in the United States and beyond. Its Encyclopedia hasan entry on “SHIRO TAKAHASHI”(http://fendnow.org/encyclopedia/shiro-takahashi/) and“TORONTO SEIRON” (http://fendnow.org/encyclopedia/toronto-seiron/).18 “JASON MORGAN,” Encyclopedia, Japan-U.S. Feminist Network for Decolonization.http://fendnow.org/encyclopedia/jason-morgan/19 These talks are available on the Toronto Seiron YouTube channel.https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4x4kumw2UcmYjiTOwZ0OkA20 For details about the controversy, see, for example, “Japanese magazine to close after Abeally's 'homophobic' article,” The Guardian, September 28,2018. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/26/shincho-45-japan-magazine-homophobia-mio-sugita-shinzo-abe21 Film screening and director talk by John Junkerman, Okinawa: The Afterburn, sponsored bySimon Fraser University’s Institute for Transpacific Cultural Research, VanCity Office ofCommunity Engagement and the School of Communication along with the Peace PhilosophyCentre, November 17, 2016, at Simon Fraser University Downtown Campus.http://www.sfu.ca/itcr/events/past-events/okinawa-afterburn.html22 “杉田水脈のなでしこレポート（２３）沖縄の基地反対運動を美化したドキュメンタリー映画…私には見るにたえない作品でした,” Sankei News, December 18, 2016.https://www.sankei.com/premium/news/161218/prm1612180015-n1.html 23 “歴史戦は政治が動かなければ勝てない オンタリオ州議会が南京大虐殺記念日制定へ,”Genron Terebi, February 10, 2017. https://www.genron.tv/ch/sakura-live/archives/live?id=36724 “Bill 79, Nanjing Massacre Commemorative Day Act, 2016,” Legislative Assembly ofOntario. https://www.ola.org/en/legislative-business/bills/parliament-41/session-2/bill-7925 David R. Mitsui, “Bill 79 Day to Commemorate the Nanjing Massacre,” National Associationof Japanese Canadians, December 7, 2016.http://najc.ca/bill-79-day-to-commemorate-the-nanjing-massacre/26 “Withdraw NAJC Opposition to Bill 79,”https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v4ecwv3jdaKAUwn_aZqXwIka4in0upn060nwPNg5Lgo/pub27 Yusuke Tanaka 田中裕介, “日系人の試練の日々の恩人たちに感謝を捧げる集い,”articleseries 滄海一粟Sokai no ichizoku, The Bulletin月報, February 2020, P44.28 1988: Government apologizes to Japanese Canadians, CBC Digital Archives.https://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/1988-government-apologizes-to-japanese-canadians

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29 “Criticism from within Japanese Canadian communities against Japanese Canadian groups'opposition to Ontario's Bill 79, An Act to Proclaim the Nanjing Massacre CommemorativeDay,” Peace Philosophy Centre,https://peacephilosophy.blogspot.com/2017/02/japanese-canadians-oppose-japanese.html30 “Letter to the Premier: Japanese Canadians for Bill 79”https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xvuNylgt_HxDkZLjqUx1WeF_3SzaQFAQ6Ih2rSsEdcc/pub31 Joy Kogawa, “Why I Support the Nanjing Massacre Commemorative Day Act,” The Star,September 15, 2017.https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2017/09/15/why-i-support-the-nanjing-massacre-commemorative-day-act-joy-kogawa.html32 “南京大虐殺巡りカナダ州議会に意見書　自民有志14人,” Nikkei Shimbun, August 20,2017. https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXLASFS20H15_Q7A820C1000000/33 “MPPs unanimously pass motion to commemorate victims of Nanjing massacre,” TheToronto Star, October 27, 2017.https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2017/10/27/mpps-unanimously-pass-motion-to-commemorate-victims-of-nanjing-massacre.html“Canada's Ontario legislature passes motion on Nanjing Massacre Commemorative Day,” NewChina, October 27, 2017. http://www.xinhuanet.com//english/2017-10/27/c_136708560.htm34 Nanjing Massacre day bill reintroduced,” China Daily, April 14, 2018.http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201804/14/WS5ad121fea3105cdcf65183d7.html35 "Petition to the Government of Canada to Establish Nanjing Massacre CommemorativeDay," Jenny Kwan, MP.https://www.jennykwanndp.ca/recognize_nanjing_massacre_commemorative_day 36 Vancouver Shinpo had a special page dedicated to opposition against Nanjing MassacreCommemorative Day. "「南京虐殺記念日」制定反対特設ページ," Vancouver Shinpo.http://www.v-shinpo.com/local/5087-tokusetsu-kinenbihantai37 “「南京大虐殺記念日」制定運動始まる　メトロバンクーバー日系社会に衝撃,” VancouverShinpo, May 24, 2018. http://www.v-shinpo.com/local/5058-local180524-138 See "Galleries" page of the Canadian Museums for Human Rights website.https://humanrights.ca/exhibition/galleries39 Japanese weekly Shukan Kinyobi reported this rally. “「南京大虐殺否定集会」に杉田水脈氏ら登壇,” Shukan Kinyobi, October 26, 2018.40 “Q6: What is the view of the Government of Japan on the incident known as the ‘NanjingIncident’?”, History Issues Q & A, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, April 6, 2018.https://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/q_a/faq16.html41 For example, Ogiue Chiki’s interview with Harada Yoshiaki, TBS Radio, October 19, 2015.https://www.tbsradio.jp/29875642 42nd Parliament, 1st Session, Edited Hansard, Number 360, House of Commons, November28, 2018. https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/house/sitting-360/hansard