The monument is a key legacy project to permanently honour all 22,000 Japanese Canadians who were uprooted from their homes and communities in 1942, and stripped of all properties and possessions which were later sold, leaving little for these communities to return home to. After the war with Japan ended in 1945 many Japanese Canadians were forced east of the Rockies or exiled to Japan, a country that many of them had never known. This second uprooting lasted until April 1, 1949, when Japanese Canadians were given the right to vote and to move freely within Canada. This history needs to be told so that it doesn’t happen again to another group of people.

In 2023, the JCLS commissioned the University of Victoria to create a searchable list of names of 22,000 Japanese Canadian men, women, and children based on pre-war places of origin. A key contribution of the Monument Database team was the production of a comprehensive list of the over 3,000 children born between 1942 and 1949, when full rights of citizenship, including freedom of movement, were finally given to Japanese Canadians. Their names will be included on a supplemental wall.