I had an interview with Ben Dorman, who participated in the GP Two-Day Workshop, and had a great time listening to him and discussing with him. This interview was about the GP workshop with Linda Ohama on 20th and 21st of July. His words and thoughts were beyond things about the event, which were very meaningful and inspiring to me. During the interview, Ben and I were discussing the film, "Obaachan's Garden", directed by Linda Ohama. He commented that the movie was showing the difference in relationships existing between grandparents and grandchildren and parents and children. Grandparents and parents have different roles to take. Meanwhile, he also told me that he got an impression of a close relationship between Linda and her grandmother. According to him, she might have seen something close to herself inside Linda and this could be why she decided to tell Linda about her history; Linda's grandmother had a strong spirit to keep on moving forward but to remember her two children and Linda did not give up and continued to finish her significant work of making a film under pressure from her family, which is one of the things that moved him. Here is the most striking thing he noted; Linda's film does not judge history (for example, the relationship between Canada and Japan) but simply presented what happened in the past. She just tried to depict what her grandmother had gone through to know about her roots better. It might be a bit challenging and difficult for many of us to have an attitude like her because it is easy to judge people in the past without knowing them (or their situation). This is what I learned from Ben and it really opened my eyes. Yes, it is definitely true that we judge and criticize people for their past actions, being based on a sense of value and morals existing in our generation, which is not fair at all. This sort of action can lead to assumptions which could be wrong. Therefore, I would like to be careful when I look at history. All things considered, Linda's workshop and her film is useful not only for understanding of our identity but also for learning history in terms of why we learn our history, how we face our history and how we understand it. These points should mean more to us and to students at schools than memorizing every single name of each historical event. I personally believe that in every education field it is necessary to understand why we learn a certain thing. And, Linda has told us one of the reasons why we look back our history. Finally, big thanks to Ben. You provided me with a great opportunity to gain many new insights and things which are worth for a good consideration. Thank you again.

by Maiko