Vancouver Foundation

ing the past . . . for the future BY CATHERINE CLEMENT | PHOTOS COURTESY OF NIMI FAMILY AND NIKKEI MUSEUM Carter is proud to show off the thousands of items the museum has gathered so far. Besides a vast array of family photos and documents, the museum's storage room also includes clothing, suitcases, household items and tapes of interviews all stacked neatly on the museum's floor-to-ceiling shelves. Even the entrance tiles from Nimi Drugstore (the original building was torn down) have found a home at the Nikkei Museum. Over the years, Vancouver Foundation and its donors have supported a variety of projects organized by the museum. Most recently, the Foundation helped fund a community outreach project with a grant of $30,000. The museum's goal was to reach out to other, smaller Japanese-Canadian organizations in B.C. to help properly document and preserve their holdings and then share them through a central, online database. "Most people don't want their artifacts to leave their community," Carter explains. "By helping these small groups gather, digitize and catalogue these artifacts, we are preserving them and making them more accessible to future generations." Last year, Carter and her small team worked with the Japanese-Canadian Cultural Centre in Kamloops. This year, they will turn their attention to New Denver, one of the last remaining sites of an internment camp that still has structures standing. There, the Internment Memorial Centre has a vast collection of artifacts that desperately need to be itemized. "Anyone who experienced the internment camps is a senior today. They understand the significance of some of these photos and artifacts," explains Carter. "As they pass away, we will lose this knowledge unless we properly catalogue it now." Carter admits the work is slow and methodical, but rewarding. Missing pieces of history are found in the back of a photo album. Treasures are recovered at the bottom of some old, dusty box: a coat worn to the internment camp with money sewn inside the lining; a box of recipes; a hand-sized doll dressed in purple and Torgoro Nimi (far left) opened his drugstore at 331 Powell Street in 1918. The business thrived until December 7, 1941. red brocade. These are the objects of a troubled past that the Nikkei Museum is preserving: an archive of memories; a catalogue of commemoration; pieces of a lost puzzle lovingly laid out for future generations to discover. VF Vancouver Foundation and our donors have supported many archival projects; you can help preserve the past for future generations by going to our website at www.vancouverfoundation.ca Spring 2012 I Vancouver Foundation l page 19 p18-19_Nikkei.indd 19 6/6/12 10:55:48 AM

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