Join us for a powerful evening in the World at War Speaker Series as one of the Museum’s historians welcomes Mandy Shintani and Susan Yatabe for a moving and deeply personal exploration of the Japanese Canadian experience during the Second World War.

Shintani’s journey began with the secret of a 450-year-old samurai sword hidden in her family’s closet — a mystery that led her to uncover her father’s largely unspoken internment and wartime past and to create the acclaimed podcast The Samurai in Our Closet. In parallel, Yatabe shares the story of her mother, a Grade 3 teacher who was interned in Kaslo, British Columbia during the Second World War. A rediscovered collection of her students’ artwork became the foundation of a 2025 museum exhibition, Experiences of an Internment Camp Teacher.

Together, these stories illuminate the lived reality behind Canada’s wartime policies, which uprooted and dispossessed 22,000 Japanese Canadians. Through photographs, children’s drawings, and rare archival audio from Nisei (second generation) interviewed for the Sedai Oral History Collection and the Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre, audiences encounter both the resilience — gaman — that sustained primarily women and children in remote internment camps as men were separated into forced work camps, and the protective silence many parents adopted in the years that followed. The hidden sword and the teacher’s classroom become powerful symbols of memory, loss and survival.

The presentation also explores the lesser-known contributions of Japanese Canadians. This includes the speakers’ fathers, who volunteered to serve in the Canadian Intelligence Corps despite being classified as “enemy aliens,” and whose duties included investigating war crimes in the Pacific Theatre and Southeast Asia. By placing family stories alongside national history, The Samurai and the Teacher reveals how large political decisions shaped individual lives across generations — and invites reflection on the enduring relevance of these histories today.