For Daniel Tokawa, the pain of having his community ripped apart by prejudiced policies from eight decades ago is finally beginning to heal.

A new exhibit at the PNE honours the thousands of innocent Japanese Canadians who were taken from their homes during the Second World War, detained, and forcibly relocated across Canada, the course of their lives forever changed.

“This memorial will go a long way towards healing our spirit,” said Tokawa, president of the Japanese Canadian Hastings Park Interpretive Centre Society. “I think being able to touch a name feels like bridging time, touching, speaking to our beloved once again. It triggers memories of their traumatic struggles.”

The memorial took the advocates behind it more than 15 years to bring it to life and features the names of more than 6,000 people who were incarcerated at Hastings Park under the War Measures Act.

More than 2,000 names are still missing, making the exhibit a testament to the difficulty of recreating this chapter in history, given that so many records were intentionally destroyed.

Tokawa was a driving force behind the memorial, which is located outside the livestock building, where many Japanese Canadians were held before being sent to work camps.

The building now also houses the Japanese Canadian Hastings Park Interpretive Centre.

“We have sort of a group memory, an intergenerational memory passed down now, because of the trauma of that period,” Tokawa said.

Henry Wakabayashi was held at Hastings Park as a child. He says he was too young to understand the gravity of what was happening, but came to realize how significant the impact was.

“When the war was over… we had no money, no place to go, no jobs,” Wakabayashi said.

“My parents didn’t have jobs, and they had to start their lives all over again,” Wakabayashi said.

Some 22,000 Japanese Canadians in B.C. were labelled “enemy aliens” and detained over that period. It was a dark chapter in the country’s history, but one that PNE officials say can’t be overlooked.

“The official opening of this permanent memorial is not going to change the past, but hopefully it will ensure that future generations of British Columbians and guests to the park have the opportunity to see, remember, and learn about the critical part of our history at Hastings Park, within our city, and our country’s past,” said PNE president and CEO Shelley Frost.