JC Legacies Community Fund

Susanne Tabata | Chief Executive Officer

Susanne is a community advocate & organizer, project manager, instructional designer, broadcast television writer, director, and producer, with 35 years industry experience in film & TV, and short form media, specializing in the documentary and strategic video communications. An adjunct college professor, Susanne led the NAJC BC Redress Project from 2020 – 2022, and is now serving to implement the set of multi-stakeholder complex projects developed under the six-fold framework: monument; education; heritage; community; seniors health & wellness; anti-racism.

Mika Kobayashi Embury | Project Coordinator

Mika is a yonsei. Born in Vancouver, she graduated with a BA from the University of Toronto in 2020. For the past two years she has worked as the People and Culture Coordinator and Community Programming Manager at the Vancouver Japanese Language School & Japanese Hall. Mika is a member of Powell Street Festival Society’s Outreach and Advocacy Committee.

John Endo Greenaway | Communications

John Endo Greenaway lives and works in Port Moody, BC on the unceded traditional territories of the Kwikwetlem, Musqueam, Squamish, Stó:lō and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. Immersed in the Japanese Canadian community for over forty years,  John is a graphic + web designer, taiko player/composer and as managing editor of The Bulletin, a journal of Japanese Canadian community, history and culture, a position he has held since 1992. In 2017 he co-authored the book Departures: the expulsion of the Japanese Canadians from the west coast 1942–1949.

Walter Quan

A former lead program officer for BC Arts Council who took the granting organization to an online system, Walter is a current consultant to various funding sites in BC, including Creative BC. Walter brings 29 years of grant building experience to help build the framework to the Community Fund, with specific expertise in development of guidelines and framework; and building application and selections processes to include designing grant juries & assessment tools.

Eiko Eby

Eiko Eby is a yonsei and former Project Manager of the first Japanese Canadian Survivors Health & Wellness Fund. Eiko has been involved in the Japanese Canadian community for 40 years. She served on both national and local chapters of the NAJC, including being a key part of the community renewal fund. As a former university professor, Eiko knows the national Japanese Canadian landscape and brings an emphasis on accountability to the project development team.

Midi Onodera | Arts & Culture

Midi Onodera is an award-winning filmmaker and media artist who has been making films and videos for 35+ years. In 2018, Midi received the Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts. Her work is laced with markers of her experiences as a feminist, lesbian, Japanese-Canadian woman. She has produced over 25 independent shorts, ranging from 16mm film to digital video to toy camera formats. Her film The Displaced View (1988) was nominated for Best Documentary at the Gemini Awards. Skin Deep (1995), her theatrical feature, screened internationally at festivals including the Rotterdam International Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival. Since 2006 she has made over 500 Vidoodles (defined as bite-sized 30 second to 2 minute video doodles). Each year since 2009 she presents an annual video project addressing themes of language, media, politics and everyday life. Her online videos can be viewed at: www.midionodera.com or www.vidoodles.com.

Melisa Kamibayashi Staples | Arts & Culture

Melisa has worked for over 16 years at the Canada Council for the Arts in various capacities, including Equity Program Officer, Outreach coordinator, Information Officer and is currently the Program Officer for Arts Across Canada: Foreign Artists Tours and Arts Abroad: Co-productions. She was also on secondment for a year at Canadian Heritage working on the Canadian Arts Training Fund. Currently, she also serves on the National Executive Board of the NAJC and is the President of the Ottawa Japanese Community Association. This past year, she stepped into the role of Programming Director for the NAJC GEI Arts Symposium, which saw approximately 100 artists from across Canada gather at the significant Gorge Park in Victoria, BC. She continues to serve on the Arts, Culture and Education (ACE) committee of the NAJC. She has a background in taiko performance, acting, and television and film production.

Jennifer Hashimoto | Arts & Culture

Jennifer Hashimoto is a Winnipeg sansei who worked in Toronto as an editor and researcher on legal publications for over 30 years before permanently returning to Winnipeg in November 2020. Her parents’ families were sent by the Canadian government to Manitoba to work in the sugar beet fields during WWII. Jennifer worked on the JC Redress movement in the 1980s and is a former Toronto NAJC president, former Nikkei Voice managing editor, and the founder of Nikkei Books, which has promoted JC writers and artists and knowledge of JC history for over 20 years.

Bill Hatanaka | Sports

Bill Hatanaka is the Board Chair of Ontario Health. He is the former President and CEO of the OPSEU Pension Trust (OPTrust), a defined benefit pension plan, jointly sponsored by the Government of Ontario and the Ontario Public Service Employees Union.

Prior to this, Mr. Hatanaka was the Group Head of Wealth Management, TD Bank Group, with responsibility for building TD’s Global Wealth and Asset Management business. He also served as the inaugural Chair of the Bank’s Diversity Leadership Council. Preceding his time at TD, Mr. Hatanaka was the Chief Operating Officer, Wealth Management, Royal Bank of Canada.

He is a former Chair of the Investment Industry Association of Canada. Mr. Hatanaka has also served on several public boards including the Toronto Montreal Exchange (TMX) and TD Ameritrade.

Originally from Bathurst, New Brunswick, he holds an MA in Global Diplomacy from the University of London, England. He has also completed the Harvard Business School Advanced Management Program, and has received the Institute of Corporate Directors, ICD.D designation.

Mr. Hatanaka currently serves on the boards of ICE NGX Canada Ltd. and Invesco Canada. He is an Honorary Governor at York University, and an Advisor to the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre.

Prior to entering the financial and public sectors, he played professional football in the Canadian Football League (CFL).

Gary Kawaguchi | Community Led Projects + Infrastructure

Gary is an experienced corporate executive, entrepreneur and not-for-profit Director. Gary was a corporate officer for 26 years with Pepsi-Cola Canada Ltd., Canadian Tire Corporation, Canada Trust, Dundee Bancorp, and Look Communications prior to founding an employee group benefits and pension advisory company in 2004 which he recently sold in 2020. Gary has also been a director on the boards of the Canadian Cancer Society (3 yrs), Summit Golf and Country Club (4 yrs), Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre (10 yrs), JCCC Foundation (15 yrs), and the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre (30 yrs).

Nicola Koyanagi | Community Led Projects

Nico (she/they)  is a mixed-race Yonsei who lives in Nogojiwanong on Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg territory. She is a community organizer, facilitator, mediator, and peer supporter who centres connection and healing in all her work. She holds an MSW from York University and works with various community organizations including OPIRG Peterborough, Mata Ashita: An Intergenerational Writing Circle for Japanese Canadians, and Tsuru for Solidarity, a nonviolent, direct action project of Japanese American social justice advocates.

Alex Miki | Community Led Projects

Alex has been involved with the Japanese Canadian community since she was little, including volunteering at the Japanese Pavilion for Folklorama and at various JCAM events. While attending the Japanese Canadian Young Leaders conference in 2015, Alex became more involved on a national level, becoming a member of the NAJC Young Leaders Committee (YLC). From 2018-2020, Alex was chair of the YLC and sat on the NAJC Executive Board. Through her work with the YLC, she helped to organize youth focused programs and managed the Young Leaders Fund which supported young Japanese Canadian initiatives.

Mark Omatsu | Community Led Projects

In 1993, when Maryka Omatsu was appointed a judge, she was the first East Asian woman to hold this position in Canada. Before this honor, she practised criminal and administrative law for 16 years in Toronto,

Judge Omatsu was on the National Association of Japanese Canadians’ (NAJC) strategy and negotiation team that won Redress in 1988 for her community.  Her book, Bittersweet Passage documented that struggle and won the Prime Minister’s Award for Publishing and the Laura Jamieson Prize for “best feminist book”.  Her 2018 video, Swimming Upstream, sets out the Japanese Canadian case for Redress from the British Columbia government and received the MADA (Making a Difference Award) from the Toronto Community Film Festival (2019).  She was a member of the NAJC team that won Redress from the BC Government in 2022. 

Most recently Judge Omatsu has been named to the:  Canadian Race Relations Foundation:  Special Advisory Council (2018); NAJC’s Steering Committee and Co-Chair for B.C. Redress (2019) and National Honorary Advisory Committee (2017).  She has been awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws (2019), the Order of Ontario (2015); the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association Trail Blazer of the Year (2013); and the Federation of Asian Canadian Lawyers’ Lifetime Achievement Award (2010).

David Moritsugu | Scholarships 

David is the former Executive Director, Admissions, at Greenwood College School in Toronto where he worked for 18 years as a teacher, coach and member of the Senior Leadership Team. David is a graduate of McGill University and the University of Toronto Law School, and practised corporate-commercial law for 16 years with Fasken Martineau DuMoulin in Toronto. David is currently a member of the board of the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre and of the Village Community Foundation which funds the operations of Global Pathways School in Tamil Nadu, India. David previously served on the board of a Canadian public company and as a member of the Independent Review Committee of two Canadian public mutual fund groups.

Jennifer Matsunaga | Scholarships 

Jennifer Matsunaga is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Ottawa. She is also a certified trauma-informed coach. Both her coaching practice and academic research are largely focused on intergenerational trauma and healing. Rooted in her lived experience as a sansei, the stories of her family’s internment and redress motivate much of her work. She is an active member of numerous academic and community-based committees that deal with questions of decolonization and social justice. She is currently a board member of the Ottawa JCA. Her academic writing has been published in a number of journals related to Indigenous-settler relations and her creative non-fiction writing has been published in Living Hyphen: Expressions of the Hyphenated Identity.

Kirsten McAllister | Scholarships 

Kirsten E. McAllister is a Professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. Her research and teaching focus on political violence, racism, migration and diaspora and her approach is interdisciplinary, drawing on Memory Studies, Visual Studies, Ethnography, Critical Race Studies and Indigenous Studies. She draws on methodologies from Art History and Ethnography, as well as creative practices from Literary Studies and Autoethnography. She has conducted community-based research projects in national and transnational contexts. In Canada has examined WWII Japanese Canadian internment camps, focusing on memorials, photographic records, oral accounts, archival documents and other media of memory produced by members of the community. In a transnational context she has researched community-based art and asylum seekers as well as contemporary Asian Canadian artists who explore different sites of memory regarding war, military occupation, colonialism and environmental disaster.

Lisa Domae | Scholarships 

Dr. Lisa Domae is a passionate advocate for the transformation role of education in community development, as released through the success of students and their families.  She is rooted in her work as North Island College (NIC) President and CEO, a role she took on in April 2021. Domae previously served as NIC’s Executive Vice President, Academic and Chief Operating Officer. A geographer and urban planner, Lisa holds a bachelor’s degree from UBC, a post-baccalaureate diploma from Simon Fraser University as well as a master’s from Queen’s University and a PhD from the University of Victoria.  She is a registered professional planner (RPP) and a member of the Canadian Institute of Planners.  As lead researcher for From Mio, Lisa works to combat growing anti-Asian racism through activities that educate Canadians about the histories of Japanese Canadians on Vancouver Island. She is an active member of the BC Council on Admissions and Transfer (BCCAT) and the Post Secondary Employers’ Association (PSEA) Board of Directors.  She lives in the Comox Valley, on the unceded traditional territory of the K’ómoks First Nation.

Dr. Lisa Domae believes in the power of education to strengthen communities, through the success of students and their families. Aside from her work at NIC, Lisa enjoys reading, writing, and spending quality time with her family.

George Iwama | Scholarships 

George Iwama, PhD

Professor George Iwama received his PhD in Zoology from the University of British Columbia (UBC) with a specialty in fish physiology. After postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Texas and Dalhousie University, he returned UBC, where he led a significant research program as a tenured full professor, in the areas of health and stress in fish. After leaving UBC, Professor Iwama led the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) Institute for Marine Biosciences in Halifax, Nova Scotia as Director General. He also led the creation of the NRC Institute for Nutrisciences and Health on Prince Edward Island. Following that he has served in senior administration in universities at four universities across Canada. He was Dean of Science and Vice President Academic at Acadia University and the Dean of Science at Carleton University. He has served as Executive Vice President, as well as Provost,of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, in Japan. He has held various posts at UBC including Special Advisor to the Vice President Research and Innovation in Interdisciplinary Fisheries; Assistant Director of the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries; and Vice Dean for Aquaculture and Strategic Initiatives in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems. He served as the President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Northern British Columbia, and most recently, he completed a term as President and Vice-Chancellor f Quest University Canada.

He is currently President Emeritus of Quest University and an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Zoology at UBC. He Chairs the Board of Directors of the Freshwater Fisheries Society of British Columbia and serves on the Board of the Pacific Salmon Foundation. He serves the University of Hong Kong as External Examiner for their Liberal Arts Program.

Dan Nomura | Infrastructure

Dan Nomura is the former President of the Canadian Fishing Company (Canfisco), which operates a fully integrated, sustainable seafood business including fishing, processing and sales. In addition to his extensive leadership experience in the industry, he is active in the community serving on the Board of the Richmond Olympic Oval, Board of Directors for YVR, and previously served on the Board of the Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre and on several cultural, educational and sport committees.

Art Miki | Infrastructure + Community Led Project

Dr. Arthur Kazumi Miki, C.M., O.M.

Mr. Art Miki is an active leader in the Japanese Canadian community having served as president of the National Association of Japanese Canadians from 1984-1992. He led the negotiations to achieve a just redress settlement for Japanese Canadians interned during the Second World War. He and his family were forcibly relocated to Manitoba sugar beet farms in 1942. Art is past-president of the Japanese Cultural Association of Manitoba and the Asian Heritage Society of Manitoba. With the Asian Heritage Society, he organized a national Asian Heritage Symposium as well as Anti-Asian Racism activities. He is advisor to the Canadian Race Relations Foundation. He was on the Community Council for the Landscapes of Injustice Project with the University of Victoria. For his efforts nationally, provincially and locally, he has received this country’s highest recognition, the Order of Canada, the Order of Manitoba and recently received the Order of the Rising Sun from the government of Japan. He received Honourary Doctorate degrees from University of Winnipeg and St. Johns College, University of Manitoba. Art is a former teacher and principal, a Canadian Citizenship Judge and a lecturer at the University of Winnipeg.

Naomi Yamamoto | Infrastructure

Naomi Yamamoto was elected as MLA for North Vancouver-Lonsdale in the 2009 general provincial election and was appointed Minister of Advanced Education on March 14, 2011.

Prior to this, Minister Yamamoto was appointed Minister of State for Intergovernmental Relations in June 2009. On October 25, 2010, she was appointed as Minister of State for Building Code Renewal.

Minister Yamamoto had been the President and owner of Tora Design Group in North Vancouver for 21 years. She also enjoyed working with the business community as the president and general manager of the North Vancouver Chamber of Commerce.

She served on the Board of the North Shore Credit Union and the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and was President of the Gordon and Marion Smith Foundation. As well, she represented the North Vancouver Chamber on the North Shore 2010 Spirit Committee and Vancouver’s North Shore Tourism Association Board.

In 1997, Minister Yamamoto served as Chair of the BC Chamber of Commerce. She completed a six-year term on the Board of Capilano College, with the last three years as chair. She also enjoyed six years as a Director of the North Shore Neighbourhood House.

In 2005, Naomi was appointed as an inaugural member of the Premier’s Small Business Roundtable.

In her role as Minister of State for Intergovernmental Relations, Naomi Yamamoto is also the Premier’s representative to the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region.

Jordan Riley | Infrastructure

Jordan is a Development Manager at Jim Pattison Developments and brings over a decade of experience in contracts and properties. Jordan began playing taiko at the age of seven with Chibi Taiko, where he is now the Assistant Artistic Director, and is a performing member of Uzume Taiko, Canada’s first professional taiko group. He is a former Vice-President of the Vancouver Taiko Society and graduated with a B.Com from UBC.