Kenzo Mori (

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

: 森研三, 1914 – January 5, 2007) was a

Nisei is a Japanese-language term used in countries in North America and South America to specify the ethnically Japanese children born in the new country to Japanese-born immigrants (who are called ). The are considered the second generation, ...

Japanese-Canadian are Canadian citizens of Japanese ancestry. Japanese Canadians are mostly concentrated in Western Canada, especially in the province of British Columbia, which hosts the largest Japanese community in the country with the majority of them livin ...

journalist, writer, editor and publisher of the ''New Canadian,'' an English-language newspaper aimed at second- and third-generation Japanese Canadians.Cordileone, Elvira
"Kenzo Mori: An impact on two shores,"
''The Star'' (Toronto). January 22, 2007.

Early life

Mori was born near

Vancouver, British Columbia Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

, in 1914. He was the son of immigrants who returned to Japan in 1918. He left Japan at age 16, graduating from high school in Canada. In due course, he earned an arts degree from the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public university, public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks a ...

Internment

Mori was interned in a camp north of Vancouver during the Second World War. His older brother, George, was also in the camp.

Career

Mori became the assistant Japanese editor of ''The New Canadian'' in the late 1940s. When retired in 1983, he had become the newspaper's editor. Mori was a founding member of the Ontario and

Canadian Ethnic Press Association Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

s. In the pages of the newspaper and elsewhere, Mori tried to be a constructive voice in the movement to address the material losses and humiliation Japanese-Canadians endured as "enemy aliens" during World War II.

Honours and awards

Mori was the recipient of a

Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal The Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal (french: link=no, Médaille du jubilé d'or de la Reine Elizabeth II) or the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal was a commemorative medal created in 2002 to mark the 50th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's ...

for public service. The Japanese government conferred the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Rays, which represents the fifth highest of eight classes associated with the award. This decoration recognized his efforts in promoting relations between Canada and Japan.

Selected works

*Kenzo Mori and Hiroto Takami. (1977). ''Kanada no Manzo Monogatari: The First Immigrant to Canada.'' Nagasaki: Osuzuyama Shobo.Mori co-authored for juvenile readers a biography of the first Japanese-Canadian Manzō Nagano, with Takami Hiroto a researcher for Japanese-Canadian history. Nagano was born in Kuchinotsu, a sailors' town on a peninsula in Japan, and at the age of 19 (1874) left Japan on an English cargo ship. It took him three years working on board sailing between Japan to Shanghai, India and Sri Lanka (called Ceylon), and he left the ship in the United States of America before settled in New Westminster, BC, in 1877. With Japanese net fishing, he became wealthy over the years on the west coast. *Original title in Japanese;

Notes