Naomi is reluctant to acknowledge the traumatic history endured by herself, her family, and the Japanese Canadian community as a whole. She believes that dwelling on the past prevents people from moving forward, and she wants to keep the past in the past. But the narrative structure of the novel itself demonstrates the failure of Naomi’s attempts to cope with her past by denying it. Naomi’s narration constantly moves through time, presenting the flashbacks to her childhood as equally vivid and real as her experiences in 1972; in fact, these flashbacks take up more of the story than the events in 1972. This highlights how Naomi’s past continues to dominate her psyche despite her attempts to ignore it. Meanwhile, Aunt Emily insists that “the past is the future,” and that ignoring the past only ensures that it will repeat itself. Emily views attending to the past as a form of activism that refuses to let the Canadian government leave its racism unacknowledged, and that helps Japanese Canadians come to terms with their collective trauma. Uncle’s death and the arrival of Aunt Emily’s box of documents are the catalysts for Naomi to begin confronting her past. Though she at times resents Emily for prompting her into this process, Naomi ends the novel with a feeling of connection to those she has lost and an understanding that she can mourn and feel her trauma without letting it consume her. Through Emily’s activism, Obasan emphasizes the importance of preserving history as a method of holding oppressors accountable, while Naomi’s journey highlights the personal value of confronting the past, even (or especially) if it is distressing.
Related Themes from Other Texts
History and Memory ThemeTracker
History and Memory Quotes in Obasan
“What a beauty,” the RCMP officer said in 1941 when he saw it. He shouted as he sliced back through the wake, “What a beauty! What a beauty!”
That was the last Uncle saw of the boat. And shortly thereafter, Uncle too was taken away, wearing shirt, jacker, and dungarees. He had no provisions, nor did he have any idea where the gunboats were herding him and the other Japanese fishermen in the impounded fishing fleet.
The memories were drowned in a whirlpool of protective silence. Everywhere I could hear the adults whispering, “Kodomo no tame. For the sake of the children…” Calmness was maintained.
All our ordinary stories are changed in time, altered as much by the present as the present is shaped by the past. Potent and pervasive as a prairie dust storm, memories and dreams seep and mingle through cracks, settling on furniture and into upholstery. Our attics and living rooms encroach on each other, deep into their invisible places.
“Write the vision and make it plain. Habakkuk 2.2”
Dear Aunt Em is crusading still. […] For her, the vision is the truth as she lives it. When she is called like Habakkuk to the witness stand, her testimony is to the light that shines in the lives of the Nisei, in their desperation to prove themselves Canadian, in their tough and gentle spirit. The truth for me is more murky, shadowy and gray. But on my lap, her papers are wind and fuel nudging my early-morning thoughts to flame.
Out loud I said, “Why not leave the dead to bury the dead?”
“Dead?” she asked. “I’m not dead. You’re not dead. Who’s dead?”
“But you can’t fight the whole country,” I said.
“We are the country.”
Obasan was not taking part in the conversation. When pressed, finally she said that she was grateful for life. “Arigati. Gratitude only.”
[…] “In the world, there is no better place,” [Uncle] said.
The house in which we live is in Marpole, a comfortable residential district of Vancouver. It is more splendid than any house I have lived in since. It does not bear remembering. None of this bears remembering.
“You have to remember,” Aunt Emily said. “You are your history. If you cut any of it off you're an amputee. Don't deny the past. Remember everything. If you’re bitter, be bitter. Cry it out! Scream! Denial is gangrene. […]”
All right, Aunt Emily, all right! The house then––the house, if I must remember it today, was large and beautiful.
“Why can’t we go home, Stephen?”
“Because. That’s why,” Stephen says crossly, and tells me no more. His eyes are like Father’s, searching.
The orders, given to Uncle and Father in 1945, reach me via Aunt Emily's package in 1972, twenty-seven years later.
The delivery service is slow these days. Understanding is even slower. I still do not see the Canadian face of the author of those words.
The crowd stands aside, waving steadily, bowing, touching arms here and there, and then they are out of view and I’m clambering up the train steps again as I did three years ago.
We sit in two seats facing each other once more, exactly like the last time. Where is Father? […] Where are we going? Will it be to a city? Remember my doll? Remember Vancouver? The escalators? Electric lights? Streetcars? Will we go home again ever?
All of Aunt Emily’s words, all her papers, the telegrams and petitions, are like scratchings in the barnyard, the evidence of much activity, scaly claws hard at work. But what good they do, I do not know––those little black typewritten words––rain words, cloud droppings. They do not touch us where we are planted here in Alberta, our roots clawing the sudden prairie air. The words are not made flesh. Trains do not carry us home. Ships do not return again. All my prayers disappear into space.
Is it so bad?
Yes.
Do I really mind?
Yes, I mind. I mind everything. Even the flies. […] It’s the chicken coop “house” we live in that I mind. […] It’s the bedbugs and my having to sleep on the table to escape the nightly attack, and the welts all over our bodies. […] Or it’s standing in the beet field under the maddening sun […].
[…] I mind the harvesttime and the hands and the wrists bound in rags to keep the wrists from breaking open. […] I cannot tell about this time, Aunt Emily. The body will not tell.
I can remember since Aunt Emily insists that I must and release the floodgates one by one. […] I can cry for Obasan, who has turned to stone.
But what then? Uncle does not rise up and return to his boats. Dead bones do not take on flesh.
What is done, Aunt Emily, is done, is it not? And no doubt it will all happen again, over and over with different faces and names, variations on the same theme.
This body of grief is not fit for human habitation. Let there be flesh. The song of mourning is not a lifelong song.
Father, Mother, my relatives, my ancestors, we have come to the forest tonight, to the place where the colors all meet––red and yellow and blue. We have turned and returned to your arms as you turn to earth and form the forest floor.
Tonight we picked berries with the help of your sighted hands. […] See how our stained fingers have read the seasons, and how our serving hands serve you still.
My loved ones, rest in your world of stone. Around you flows the underground stream.
