Foreword to the 2020 Digitized Edition
By Lynn Deutscher Kobayashi
President, Toronto NAJC
September 2020
Roger Obata was Vice-President of the NAJC when the historic human rights settlement and Apology to Japanese Canadians was achieved on September 22, 1988. Despite the work of “several gifted authors in our community” to document the Redress story, Obata felt that the story was yet “half-told”. He felt an urgent need to recognize the volunteers and untitled leaders of the Redress campaign in Toronto. He set in motion the making of this book to “recognize the personal sacrifices made by its many “unsung heroes”.
Twenty years have passed since this book was published and 18 years since Roger Obata’s death in 2002. It seems now, that it is his own immense contribution to achieving Justice in Our Time that has been somewhat obscured. We hope the digitization of this book will encourage research and writing to document and secure Roger Obata’s place as one of, if not the most important champion of equal rights for the Japanese Canadian community and the importance of the Toronto campaign in accomplishing this.
Of all the leaders in our community, none have been as present as Roger Obata at our most important moments of crisis and advocacy. His activism began in the 1930’s with the Japanese Canadian Citizen’s League (JCCL) in Vancouver. In 1936 the JCCL sent a delegation to Ottawa to lobby for the vote. Due to his final engineering exams at the University of British Columbia he was prevented from attending. Hide Hyodo Shimizu, a Toronto NAJC Redress activist was part of that delegation.
Obata was a founding member of Toronto’s first Japanese Canadian organization, the Japanese Canadian Citizens for Democracy (JCCD) formed in 1942 to help resettle Japanese Canadians in the East, stop the exile of Japanese Canadians to Japan and secure the right to enlist. From 1947 to 1951 he was on the Cooperative Committee on Japanese Canadians involved with the disappointing Royal Commission on Japanese Claims, known as the “Bird Commission”. When advised by their legal counsel Andrew Brewin to sign waivers to make no further claims on the government for property losses which amounted to about 10% of the total claim, he and Kunio Hidaka resigned from the committee. The 1988 Redress agreement ensured that these waivers became void.
In 1947 Obata became President of the first national organization of Japanese Canadians, formed in Toronto, the National Japanese Canadian Citizens Association (NJCCA) which changed its name to the National Association of Japanese Canadians (NAJC) in 1980. In 1977 he was elected National Chairman of the Japanese Canadian Centennial Committee and travelled across the country to promote a cross Canada vision of the event. The Centennial revitalized the scattered Japanese Canadian community and amplified conversations about seeking Redress. A year later, he and his wife Mary Obata were part of the Momiji Healthcare Society founding group.
On November 26, 1980, the newly named NAJC represented by Gordon Kadota, Roger Obata, and Dr. Art Shimizu presented arguments to the Joint Committee examining the Charter of Rights in support of the entrenchment of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms within the proposed Constitution. At these hearings Obata expressed a desire for “… some guarantee of human and civil rights … in light of the experience of Japanese Canadians. A Charter of Rights entrenched in the Constitution to prevent what we have gone through, is the least Canada can do to make amends for what has happened to us, and to ensure that such injustices will never be repeated.”
Thanks to the persistence of Mike Murakami, the window into the development of the largely unexamined Toronto Redress story will expand. His commitment to ensuring the legacy of the Toronto NAJC Redress movement become accessible to the community and to researchers has taken the form of directing primary source materials; personal stories, documents, audio-visual media and other resources related to the NAJC and the Toronto NAJC to the University of Toronto Thomas Fisher Library, Japanese Canadian History Project Collection. As well, without his financial support Japanese Canadian Redress: The Toronto Story may never have been re-launched.
My father Bill Kobayashi was the Chair of the Ad Hoc Committee that wrote this book as a collective and I am honoured to be a part of keeping their work accessible. To the leaders, volunteers and all who contributed to the remarkable story of winning the largest Canadian human rights settlement of its time, we will not forget.