Obasan

After the war, former prisoners of Japanese internment camps make up 65% of laborers in Alberta’s beet farms, and the Nakanes are among that number as they work at the Barker family farm in Granton. They live in constant hardship. The labor is brutal, the hut (which was formerly a chicken coop) is infested with bugs and offers no temperature regulation, and the family are always too exhausted or too spread out over the fields to talk to each other or anyone else. The adult Naomi recalls all this, venting her rage at the situation by repeating that she “minds” each indignity and moment of pain. After a few years of this, Uncle stops talking about going home.

In 1948, the House of Commons bans Japanese Canadians from returning to British Columbia for another year. Though some politicians vocally oppose this, the policy’s defenders argue that they are acting not out of racial prejudice but out of concern for national security and the security of Japanese Canadians. Naomi looks through Emily’s documentation of this and finally cries for all that her family has lost. Still, Naomi thinks that her tears can’t undo what has been done, and she believes that “it will all happen again” countless more times.