TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO:

 

Today I brought with me a coat made by my great aunt Marie or Mariē, her Japanese name.

 

With her brand, the Mariē Brand of Fashion Design, written on the inside that she would have made in Toronto as early as the 1940s. I have a scarf that was found in my great grandfather's kura, or shed, that was given I believe to my grandfather or to my uncle, when they were there in the 1970s and given to me like just in the past few years. It's a silk scarf in a traditional print. I don't know it could be over 100-years-old, I'm not really sure. And then I have a pair of my grandmother's shoes from probably around the 1960s that she would have worn on one of her days out. They're brown leather shoes.

 

My grandmother started her own school of fashion design in Steveston, so right by Vancouver called the Marietta School of Fashion Design. So, before that she went to fashion school in I think San Francisco, which was super uncommon at the time, but she always really wanted to study and to make something of herself and her, her mom was like, our family's worked in textiles for generations, you're going to work in textiles. So she was like, I'm gonna put my own spin on it. So she opened her school of fashion design.

 

And there her sister Marie, worked with her to teach classes. And Marie also always loved designing her own pieces. So, she started her own fashion line called the, under the name like Mariē, her Japanese name, which she still pursued postwar, but so, when the incarceration happened, my grandmother, Dorothy Haruko, who I'm named after. Obviously, like, they weren't able to keep the school running because everything was being dispossessed. But my grandmother and her mother, being the ever-savvy business women had copyrighted her school and her, I guess, her curriculum, so, former students of my grandma were actually teaching her curriculum in some of the internment camps. I know for a fact that it was being done at Tashme and I'm sure it was being done at others as well. 

 

During the war, my grandmother, her sisters, and her mother, were permitted to leave earlier and come to Toronto. And from there, I know that my grandma had hoped to start up her school again here and it just never happened. I'm not sure if it was because she got married and decided to have kids or if it was just too difficult with other things going on. But my great Auntie Marie never really gave up her love of fashion design and even in Toronto was pursuing it, that's where this coat was made. 

 

My grandma never stopped loving fashion either. It was like, up until her last years, like up until her last months, when she got really sick, she was always like, very aptly dressed, jewelry,

different layers, different colors, making sure like she got beautiful gifts for the grandchildren. Like fashion was always a really important part of her life. 

 

I think there's a notion that's kind of attributed to a lot of mixed race people that you can kind of like pick and choose how you're going to identify one day, like, I can just put on my hat and be like, I'm Japanese today, and then take it off and be like, now I'm Irish, which isn't how things work. And I think it's like, this coat is a reminder of like, my very very Japanese-Canadian roots and that like they're a part of me. It's like this weird metaphor for intersectionality that like, you can't really remove one from the other. 

 

With the scarf I feel like an interesting connection. I didn't really know my grandfather, he passed away a few months after I was born, but it's like this connection to his side of the family and I don't, I never had a chance to feel this many connections to his side of the family. But, essentially, like, it's this interesting story of like, my grandfather was born in Canada, but went back, in quotations, to Japan and then decided to come back to Canada. But then there was like, all of his history in Japan still stayed. And that like, I get to, like, kind of, like, have this piece of like, his connection to Japan. And like, I think it kind of makes me feel, like it reminds me of my connection to Japan, and that like, even though I'm like a fourth generation Japanese-Canadian, even though people will assert that like, because I'm mixed race that maybe I don't have as much of a right to like, identify as Japanese, because I'm not born there maybe I don't have a right to identify this Japanese or feel a sense of like, home there, that like this scarf kind of reminds me like, it's a tangible reminder that like, there's this like, piece of me that like, no matter what anyone says, no matter what anyone tries to take away is there, and it's not going anywhere. 

 

Many different groups, many different visible minority groups, especially have dealt with a history of loss and displacement. And it's something that you can't really forget and like thinking about passing on an inheritance and like thinking about how lucky I am to have these objects from my grandfather and grandmother, and that there are so many people who've lost so much, not just in terms of like physical loss, but cultural, emotional loss, it's really important to remember and I like to focus on it to remember just how lucky I am to have these like pieces of my grandparents that allow me to feel close to them when so many others don't have that.