{"id":11014,"date":"2018-02-25T00:03:37","date_gmt":"2018-02-25T04:03:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jss.ca\/jss-newsletter-vol-6-no-1-march-2018\/%e3%82%ab%e3%83%88%e3%82%a6%e3%83%bb%e3%82%b7%e3%83%b3%e3%82%b3%e3%83%bb%e3%83%a1%e3%82%a2%e3%83%aa%e3%83%bc%e3%81%95%e3%82%93%ef%bc%88%e6%97%a7%e5%a7%93%e3%80%80%e3%83%8a%e3%82%ac%e3%82%bf%ef%bc%89\/"},"modified":"2021-02-16T14:21:52","modified_gmt":"2021-02-16T18:21:52","slug":"life-lessons-shinko-nagata","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jss.ca\/en\/jss-newsletter\/jss-newsletter-vol-6-no-1-march-2018-en\/life-lessons-shinko-nagata\/","title":{"rendered":"LIFE LESSONS from Mary Shinko Kato (Nagata)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meaghan Tanaka
\nOnce a week I visit a long-term care facility with my dog, Samson, as part of the St. John Ambulance Therapy Dog program.\u00a0 Samson loves the attention he receives, but even he senses the sadness and loneliness felt by many of the residents.\u00a0 The visits can be emotionally draining for both us, but they can also be heart-warming, enlightening, and inspiring when strangers we visit become friends, and friends become family. Shinko Mary Kato is one of the strangers who have become family.
\n
\n<\/a> I was drawn to Mary because of her Japanese heritage and the parallels I saw between her and my Nisei grandparents.\u00a0 She was born Shinko Mary Nagata in 1922 in Vancouver, British Columbia.\u00a0 Her mother, Naka, kept Mary and her six siblings corralled in the front yard of 2330 Wall Street in the east end of Vancouver near the Burard Inlet.\u00a0 She taught them the Japanese language, cooking, and customs, but she also emphasized understanding the customs of their Caucasian neighbours.\u00a0 Mary\u2019s father, Shichitaro worked for the Japanese-owned Queen Charlotte Timber Holding Company.\u00a0 It was because of his job that on the night of Japan\u2019s attack on Pearl Harbor, two RCMP officers came to the Nagata home and arrested him as an \u201cenemy alien\u201d. Mary and her younger sister, Ruth Fusako were forced to leave the University of British Columbia (UBC).\u00a0 The family was forced to leave their home, their pet dog, and canary.
\nMary\u2019s life is surprisingly well documented.\u00a0 The letters that Mary and her family wrote to government officials during the time of Shichitaro\u2019s imprisonment are the focus of the Landscapes of Injustice<\/em><\/a> research paper \u201cOur Appreciation for All Your Goodness and Kindness\u201d: Power, Rhetoric, and Property Relations in the Dispossession of Japanese Canadians.<\/em><\/a>\u00a0 In 2012, Mary and her sister, Ruth Fusako received two of the 76 honorary degrees given by UBC to the Nikkei students forced to leave the university in 1942.\u00a0 Her story is highlighted in both the commemorative yearbook RETURN<\/em><\/a>, and the documentary, A Degree of Injustice<\/em><\/a> that were produced for the event.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Mary is the focus of almost every article written about the honorary convocation. She is described as the individual who \u201cexemplified the moment\u201d. <\/a>
\nMary does not seek the limelight, but it is not chance that has resulted in her story being documented by so many writers and film-makers; it is Mary\u2019s exuberance, her insight and her beautiful perspective on life.\u00a0 Watch one of the interviews with Mary kept in the UBC Library and Archives<\/a> and you will see why she has inspired so many people.
\nMany of the people I visit in long-term care facilities are depressed.\u00a0 They complain to me about the staff and the food.\u00a0 Mary tells me how innovative she thinks members of the staff are by helping her to make peanut butter cookies and using the activity of kneading the dough to exercise her arthritic hands. Other residents I visit tell me about how much they miss their homes, having a pet, doing the things they used to love to do with the people they loved so much who are now gone.\u00a0 Mary tells me about what she misses too: her home of over 70 years, her beloved husband and dog who have both passed away, her son and daughter who live several hours away from Toronto, and her beautiful granddaughter who has moved to Hong Kong.\u00a0 She tells me about how she misses celebrating the New Year at home with all of her family, but unlike the other residents she focuses on the positive.\u00a0 She tells me how devoted her daughter who lives in Toronto is, how her other grandchildren visit whenever they have breaks from university, how her sister and brother bring celebrations to her, and how much my dog Samson and I mean to her.\u00a0 She has been injured by bad falls recently, but she downplays them; she is too busy worrying about how my baby and I are doing.
\nThe first thing she explained when I met her was the reason that so many people struggle with aging.\u00a0 When you are young you expect everything to be done on your terms.\u00a0 As you age you become more dependent on others and you have to understand that things have to be done on other people\u2019s terms.\u00a0 She told me, \u201cPatience. You have to learn patience.\u201d\u00a0 When she talks about her childhood in Vancouver her eyes well up with tears.\u00a0 They are tears of joy when she talks about her family, but they become tears of hurt when she remembers elementary school.\u00a0 She was mocked for her Japanese name and dress. She was never picked for the skipping game \u2018Farmer in the Dell\u2019 and not allowed to play hopscotch.\u00a0 Ninety years later it still pains her to remember, but she tells me it is why she is interested in understanding others.
\nWhen I ask Mary the secret to happiness, she replies, \u201cLooking for nice things every day; and looking forward to tomorrow and the happy surprises it might bring — like you visiting!\u201d At this point my eyes well up with tears.\u00a0 Every time I see her I tell her that my life is better because I have her in it.
\nMary is looking forward to turning 96 years old on March 10 and I hope to celebrate it with her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Secrets for a Happy Life: Patience, Understanding, and Optimism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":11015,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[271],"tags":[312],"class_list":["post-11014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jss-newsletter-vol-6-no-1-march-2018-en","tag-health-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jss.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jss.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jss.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jss.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jss.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jss.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jss.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jss.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jss.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jss.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}