Why teaching Japanese Canadian history matters today

Education • March 12, 2026
Image from Andrea Phillpott’s Patterns of Injustice

Japanese Canadian Legacies is built on five funded pillars: Community & Culture, Seniors Health & Wellness, Monument, Education, and Heritage Preservation, with a focus on honouring our elders, past and present. While many initiatives provide direct support and recognition to Survivors, Education serves as an important connection between community and the broader public, who generally know little if anything of this history and the lessons it holds.

A new website, JapaneseCanadianHistory.com, is not confined to the classroom but invites everyone to engage with this history, including the uprooting, incarceration, and permanent dispossession of 22,000 Japanese Canadians in the 1940s. The site holds valuable lessons, particularly regarding what can happen when fear and ignorance are allowed to dictate government policy and public opinion.

Patterns of Injustice

Pre-made lesson packages within JapaneseCanadianHistory.com allow educators to show students how there is a linkage between “othering” a community, and the eventual total loss of that community’s homes and rights.

Andrea Phillpott’s recently completed Patterns of Injustice is a three-lesson unit built for high school teachers and students that looks at the common patterns of injustice observed within Japanese Canadian history, how these patterns can be observed in today’s world, and what we can do to confront injustice in the present and future. In a world where young people often feel powerless, this history provides a roadmap for how to stand up against systemic injustice.

Two sessions on this lesson package will be presented at the Surrey Teachers’ Association Pro-D day on May 1, 2026.

Slide from Patterns of Injustice

Showcasing Education

OLA team (L–R): John Endo Greenaway, Susanne Tabata, Kiyoshi Nagata, Lynn Deutscher Kobayashi, Jeff Chiba Stearns, Chen Sing Yap, Lara Okihiro

The Japanese Canadian Legacies Society (JCLS), in promoting JapaneseCanadianHistory.com to the broader community, is working to bring Japanese Canadian history to the forefront—most recently showcasing the website resources at the 2026 OLA Super Conference in Toronto. We will be presenting at the Surrey Teachers’ Association spring conference in May.

Jeff Chiba Stearns, JCLS Education brand ambassador, is helping spread the news about this resource both at JCLS-attended conferences and through his extensive work in the schools.

Toronto author Lara Okihiro signing her book Obaasan’s Boots, co-authored with her cousin Janis Bridger; and Vancouver author, illustrator and educator Jeff Chiba Stearns signing his book, Tomey: The Unyielding Spirit of Tomekichi Homma, illustrated by Ally Adachi.
Susanne Tabata and Toronto NAJC President Lynn Deutscher Kobayashi who stopped by with advance copies of The Japanese Canadian Book of ABCs, illustrated by Kellen Hatanaka and Mia Ohki. This whimsical book, funded by a Community Projects grant, offers an accessible entry point into JC history. 

History doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes

The “security of the state” is sometimes used to justify the suspension of human rights and our history serves as a cautionary tale. By teaching about the 1942 forced uprooting – not as a “mistake,” but as a deliberate set of government policies – we learn to identify patterns of injustice in order to recognize when history may be repeating itself.

On JapaneseCanadianHistory.com, a self-directed teacher course provides an introduction to Japanese Canadian history for teachers and anyone interested in the subject. The three modules in the course each include a short quiz to test comprehension. Give it a try!

Justice Maryka Omatsu, Canada’s first female judge of East Asian descent, was instrumental in leading the 2019 NAJC BC Redress community consultations, producing an early report presented to the BC Government as a key building block in the resulting historical wrongs framework.

“I am hopeful that Canadians, on learning of our past, will refuse to let State or individual acts of racism steal the life, property and dignity of innocent Canadians.”
– Justice Maryka Omatsu, from afterword to Japanese Canadian Redress: The Toronto Story, quoted in the Patterns of Injustice lesson plan.

To book a workshop or for more information, email education@jclegacies.com

Japanese Canadian Legacies are initiatives that honour our elders past and present. We are grateful to be doing this work on the ancestral lands of the Coast Salish peoples.