I think there is something to be said about seeing Canadian society as a cultural 'mosaic.' Not that it accurately describes any particular national directive, but when writing about race in Canada, it's hard not to acknowledge it as a vocalized cultural discourse. Even in contrast to the American 'melting pot,' there is an ambiguity to the concept of 'Canadian' nationality. Growing up as mixed race provides a different vantage point to experiencing what it means to exist within this 'mosaic.' In interviews with people of similar descent to myself, I got the feeling that we shared this sense of being ethnically half-Japanese, yet growing up as nationally 'Canadian.' In attempting to carve out our own place in society as one of the first large generations of half-Japanese Canadians, we not only struggle to determine how we identify ethnically, nationally, and culturally within this modern Canadian mosaic of liberal values, but we also strive to acknowledge and digest the shared legacy of internment contextualized within our mixed heritage.

One of the unique difficulties of our particular mixed identity comes from the legacy of internment in Canada. From the early to late 1940s, William Lyon Mackenzie King's administration moved approximately 23,000 Japanese Canadians - mostly from B.C. - into camps, shut down cultural publications, seized and sold their property, all the while enacting a policy of repatriation of Japanese Canadians. Some of these citizens served in the First World War in the Canadian forces, putting their lives on the line for their homeland.

Growing up in Vancouver definitely made me relate to my Japanese heritage in a very conscious way, as I was always asked, "What are you?" I would be told how 'Asian' I was by white people, and how 'white' I was by other Asians. This sparked a form of racial and political awareness that was exacerbated by the fact that, within my physical surroundings, many ethnic groups had their own neighbourhoods within Vancouver - Chinatown being one of the most well-entrenched and resilient areas in a quickly gentrifying landscape. When I realized that what used to be Vancouver's Little Tokyo was sold off during internment, I began seeing Canada through a political lens that I think I was too young to fully grasp. Through experiences like this, I found myself turning to others' experiences for answers about my own.

Karlene Ooto-Stubbs' family was originally from B.C., but was forced to move to Manitoba during internment. I met her while studying political science at McGill, and found her to have an interesting perspective on Japanese Canadian identity. She sees her citizenship within Canada as non-normative as affected by the legacy of systematic racial persecution of Japanese people in Canada. She says, "Queer citizenship is having no place to directly call home with the same sense of ownership as someone who hasn't faced systematic persecution from their own state. Always having to explain what you are and justify your own existence." At the same time, Japan doesn't allow people to hold dual citizenship, and this contorts one's sense of belonging in a world where nations and states are supposed to be cohesive - even though we've both acknowledged that this sense of historical insecurity doesn't diminish what it means to be Canadian. As one of the first large generations of mixed race peoples, we could not exist anywhere else - our home is, in a sense, a form of limbo.

With around 98 per cent of Japan's population identifying as ethnically Japanese, and a conservatively rigid culture defining what it means to be nationally Japanese, there is little room to be non-conforming. Eli Oda Sheiner, a Masters student in psychology at McGill who spends some of his time working and travelling in Japan, conveyed to me a norm wherein being politically active is viewed as a social faux pas. He told me a story that I found strange: he described the clothing store American Apparel as a sort of commercialized source of counterculture in Japanese society. He depicted it as a place where young people in Tokyo - whether LGBTQ, mixed race, or just culturally subversive - could exist in a place where there was less cultural rigidity, while still not being overtly political. I found this interesting, as Japan has historically had a difficult time dealing with issues like immigration, integration, and assimilation. Take, for instance, people of Korean descent (Zainichi), who have for generations spoken Japanese, taken Japanese names, and lived within Japan, yet were nevertheless denied full citizenship rights. Whether in Canada or Japan, being half-Japanese creates barriers to accessing and conceptualizing our citizenship, ethnicity, and culture, but at the same time it gifts us with the awareness to speak out in ways that others can't.

I also spoke to Kai Nagata, a man who has fought to promote public awareness for years, first as the Quebec City Bureau Chief of CTV News, and now as the Energy and Democracy Director at the Dogwood Initiative. His family suffered through internment, but he told me that he has always had a strong sense of being Canadian, and that his ethnic background has really been a gift, acting as a point of access in relating to other minorities and often marginalized peoples. His grandparents would emphasize how internment gave them an understanding of how conditional their rights were. When discussing how being half-Japanese affected his sense of ownership of the Canadian state, he walked me through some of his experiences with his own citizenship. From joining the Canadian reserve forces to entering the field of journalism with CBC and then CTV, Nagata saw himself as being politicized because of his very nature and heritage. He told me that "history does repeat itself, it rhymes," and about how he saw himself and others like him as having the responsibility to actively fight the marginalizing trends in our society. He pointed to the dispossession of Indigenous people and the denial of their rights, and Islamophobia as manifestations of marginalizing trends that cannot be excused in a democratic society. He believes that the very thing that irreparably degraded the previous generation was what makes people of mixed descent today so politically aware - just enough to be able to take on a position of stewardship of civil rights issues from a point of empathy, while having enough distance not to be harmed in the process.

Today, people like myself have a unique opportunity to build our own cultural understanding of what it means to be ethnically half-Japanese and nationally Canadian. Though historical winds that push and pull us in many directions exist, we have to determine for ourselves what lessons and duties we can take from these legacies. I do see people like myself, like the others here have outlined, as being one of the first generations that can speak out and act as a bridge to provide allyship and solidarity; not only to other people of mixed race, but also to those who now face disadvantaged positions within our society. Having a foot in both worlds gives us access to a vantage point wherein we can speak from a place of empathy, not just sympathy. As mixed race people become globally more commonplace, we must act preemptively now, to make our own society a leading example of how solidarity between identities can forge understanding between communities previously divorced by animosity, oppression, and ignorance of each other.