Being Asian in Winnipeg: panel to talk human rights Sunday

The history of Japanese Manitobans will be put in the spotlight Sunday at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

And that means having some uncomfortable conversations about the forced internment of Japanese citizens and children that occurred when Canada declared war on Japan, following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour.

Art Miki, who is now president of both the Japanese Cultural Association of Manitoba and the Asian Heritage Society of Manitoba, was just five years old when he and his family were forced to move to a beet farm in rural Manitoba during the Second World War.

Thousands of other Japanese Canadians were sent to internment camps across Canada.

"It didn't matter whether you were on the farm or not, you were considered theoretically interned," Miki said.

He recalled life on the farm without running water or electricity and the farmers who would come to Winnipeg in search of Japanese workers.

"They would come with their trucks and then they would look over the crop of people who were there and if they noticed that there's a family with a lot of able-bodied people who could work on the farm, they were the first ones picked," Miki said. "It was just like a slave market and you were the slave."

It's stories like Miki's that will be discussed at a panel, titled Being Asian in Winnipeg, Sunday at noon at the museum.

The panel is part of the museum's celebration of Asian Heritage Month.

Cultural performances will also take place at the museum and admission is free of charge.

"We're trying to showcase not only our history and culture but music and other things as well," Miki said.