SUCCESS STORY
what it means to be
NIKKEI By Nic Enright-Morin
W
hen Sherri Kajiwara came to Canada from Japan, she was just three years old. She had not been exposed to English whatsoever, which would be a challenge for any newcomer, but even more so for a child who was being sent to Canada for adoption. “My adoptive parents tried to have their own kids and couldn’t, and I was living with my brother and grandmother in Japan,” says Kajiwara. “In Japan, there was an old tradition, going back hundreds and thousands of years, where if one family had many children and another family didn’t, often the younger children were given up for adoption to the family that didn’t have any children. It was along those lines that my adoptive family and birth family were brought together.” Kajiwara’s grandmother was raising her and her older brother, but because she had so little support to help with caring for the children and an ailing husband, she decided to have the children adopted, for the chance of a better life. Although Kajiwara was supposed to be adopted alongside her brother, she ended up coming to Canada by herself, leaving behind everything she had ever known. Despite being so young, Kajiwara says that the transition didn’t faze her. “I spent my first year in Canada in Lethbridge, Alberta. I don’t remember much of it at all,” she says. “But I was very outgoing and soon I had all the neighbourhood kids following behind me singing Japanese songs. I remember it as being very welcoming. It was probably an easier place to transition into than a large city.” Because her adoptive parents promised her grandmother that they would keep up her Japanese language and heritage, the family moved a year later to Vancouver, where they felt there would be more opportunity to access Japanese traditions and culture. Kajiwara says her adop-
8
canadianimmigrant.ca
May 2016
Photos by Sandra Minarik
tive family worked hard to ensure that she felt a strong connection with her birth country and today she feels she has a firm footing in both places. “My Canadian family was very open-minded and brought me back to visit Japan many times. They wanted me to know my brother as my brother,” she says. “When I first went back, I had lost a lot of my Japanese; I could understand him, I couldn’t argue back, and I didn’t like that at all! I wanted to win the arguments with my older brother, so that gave me the motivation to relearn the language. By the time I graduated from the University of British Columbia here, I was fluent.” Since 2010, Kajiwara has been further immersed in Japanese language and culture, working at the Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre, in Burnaby, B.C. (The word “Nikkei” is derived from the term nikkeijin in Japanese, which refers to Japanese people who emigrated from Japan and their descendants.) And, for the past year, she has been the director and curator of the museum. The Japanese community has a long history in Canada, and the Nikkei Centre officially opened on Sept. 22, 2000, to commemorate its place in the Canadian mosaic. The date of the museum opening is a significant one, as it is the anniversary of the Canadian government’s formal apology for how Japanese Canadians were treated during the Second World War. The centre itself is home to a Japanese cultural centre, a museum, a community centre and a Japanese garden. “When I first moved to Vancouver, the Nikkei Centre did not exist, which is interesting, because this is definitely the type of facility that would have fulfi lled all of the obligations my adoptive parents made when they adopted me, so it’s interesting that I’ve >>
facebook.com/canimmigrant
