In 1892 (Meiji 25), 600 single Japanese men left Japan for New Caledonia under a migration scheme which was promoted by Enomoto Takeaki, the then Japanese Minister
of Foreign Affairs. They came to New Caledonia to work in the nickel mines on a 5-year contract. By 1919, the total number of Japanese people who had come to New Caledonia was 5,575.

When their contracts with the mine expired, some returned to Japan, while others married local New Caledonian women and settled on different parts of the island. They took up various occupations, including market gardening, salt farming, shopkeeping, fishing, working on coffee plantations, barbering, tailoring, carpentry and silversmithing. Their community was a center of commercial life for New Caledonian society at that time.

As a consequence of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, the Free French Government arrested 1,340 first-generation Japanese residents in New Caledonia and held them on Nou Island. Of those, 1,124 were taken to Australia on four separate ships and interned there until the end of the war. In 1946, they were deported to Japan. This caused disruption in family units. Wives and children who had lost the economic support of the men had to continue their lives under great hardship.

It is estimated that there are about 8,000 people who are descendants of the pre-war Japanese migrants on this small island with a population of only 200,000. Many of the elderly Niseis (2nd generation) reminisce fondly of the old days.

The aim of this exhibition is to illuminate the lives of these people, which were irrevocably changed by the war, and to tell this human story in a public space. It is a unknown chapter of the history of Japanese emigration which few Japanese know, and it is also part of the history of New Caledonia which is almost forgotten today.

We hope that this exhibition will bring a closer and more amicable relationship between New Caledonia and Japan more than one hundred years.

Director Mutsumi TSUDA