Mennonite
Central
Committee

MCC Names Recipient of the 20th Canadian Japanese Mennonite Scholarship

July 27, 2005
Tara Tharayil

Mennonite Central Committee Canada (MCCC) and the National Association of Japanese Canadians (NAJC) have awarded Vancouver's Cindy Mochizuki with the 2005 Canadian Japanese Mennonite Scholarship.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the scholarship. It was first awarded in 1986 as a tangible expression of regret for the treatment of Japanese Canadians in the years during the Second World War.

During WWII, Japanese Canadians suffered injustices based on their ethnicity. Many were forcibly relocated to internment camps which stretched from British Columbia's interior to Petawawa, Ontario. Other ethnic groups, including some Mennonites, unknowingly benefited from what Japanese Canadians lost. MCC Canada created this scholarship in conjunction with the NAJC in order to support research, writing and studies of the well-being and protection of minority groups.

This year's winner, Cindy Mochizuki, is in the second year of a Masters of Fine Arts program at Simon Fraser University's School of Contemporary Arts. She is using film, art and writing to express the feelings associated with memory and the internment experience of Japanese Canadians during World War II.

Mochizuki's first year project was to script and produce a film entitled Wake. For her second year, Mochizuki will be exhibiting Wake and undertaking a new project called Sleep & Other Urban Ghosts. This will be a collection of poetic responses which have been generated by interviewing and researching kika-nisei — Canadian-born persons of Japanese heritage.

In 1945, the Canadian government declared that all people of Japanese origin, including kika-nisei, would have to choose between "dispersal east of the Rockies" or "repatriation to Japan". By the time the government withdrew the policy in 1947, approximately 4,000 people had returned to Japan. The option to return to Canada was only granted several years later. Of the 4,000 'repatriated' Japanese Canadians, half were kika-nisei. One kika-nisei is Cindy Mochizuki's father.

Mochizuki hopes to gather first-hand accounts of the kika-nisei experience during a trip to Japan later this year. Much of her passion for this subject stems from her own family's experience in British Columbia's internment camps, and their time in Japan.

"I plan to create a web-based, virtual map to trace the lineage of my father's family, and their experiences from the internment camps, to Japan, and eventually, their return to Canada," she said. "In the future, I would like to continue my work as an interdisciplinary artist and one day, I hope to teach fine arts."

The Canadian Japanese Mennonite Scholarship is awarded to Canadians of all ethnicities who are pursuing graduate studies in any discipline who promotes the study of, and a commitment to, the protection and well-being of minority rights. It is hoped that such studies will help to reduce abuses of minority rights, as happened with Japanese Canadians during WWII.