Dr. Michiko Midge Ayukawa will shed light on the lives and histories of picture brides—Issei women who came to North America to marry husbands they knew only from photographs— and how they affected the community.

Michiko Midge Ayukawa was born in Vancouver, B.C. During World War II, she was incarcerated for four years at Lemon Creek, in the Slocan Valley, Canada. Her family resettled in Hamilton, Ontario. After obtaining her BSc and MSc at McMaster University, she worked at the National Research Council in Ottawa. Later she taught undergraduate Chemistry laboratory classes at Carleton University and the University of Victoria. In the mid-80s, she began to study history and obtained a Doctorate in 1997 at the University of Victoria. Ayukawa has written a number of articles on Japanese Canadians, in particular, Japanese picture brides. She has co-authored with Audrey Kobayashi “The Japanese Canadians” in Akemi Kikumura-Yano, ed., Encyclopedia of Japanese Descendants in the Americas, Altimira Press, 2002 and is also co-author with Patricia Roy of “The Japanese,” in Paul Robert Margosi, ed., The Encyclopedia of Canada’s Peoples, University of Toronto Press, 1999. A book based on her dissertation, Hiroshima Immigrants in Canada, 1891-1941 was published in November 2007 by UBC Press.

This program was made possible by the generous support of the UCLA Paul I. & Hisako Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies