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Local Nakatsui history highlighted with visiting exhibit from Nikkei National Museum

A wooden desk and chair sit in a corner, next to a wall with the words, “Refect, Imagine”.
Viewers of "The Suitcase Project" are encouraged to imagine and reflect on what it would be like to pack a bag, and leave everything else behind. Photo by Melanie Boyle.
Loni Taylor - CKTZ - Cortes Island • BC | 17-07-2022
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The Cortes Museum has opened an exhibit called The Suitcase Project that explores the culture of 4th and 5th generation Japanese Canadians and Americans in response to the Japanese internment and incarceration during World War II.

There are several components that have been added to the exhibit to include Cortes-specific history as it relates to Japanese residents from the past and currently on Cortes Island.

A large tapestry of fruit hangs central on a wal with old fashioned suitcases piled in front.

"The Suitcase Project" is on display at the Cortes Museum through November. Photo by Melanie Boyle.

Melanie Boyle, managing director of the Cortes Island Museum, explained that one of the components was focused on a local family.

“There was a fairly well known family called the Nakatsui family…was dedicated to exploring that family. What happened to them, how they arrived and what happened to them after 1942, when the Japanese Canadians were interned.”

Two local Japanese-Canadian artists also contributed to the exhibit. 

“We invited Suzu Matsuda and Ayami Stryck to recreate in a way or reinterpret a possible Japanese home in the middle of last century,” the managing director noted.

Kayla Isomura, a photographer based in Vancouver, created the traveling exhibition The Suitcase Project through the Nikkei National Museum in Burnaby, BC.

Listen to the full interview below:

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