Both sides of my parents’ families were interned during the war. However, since three of my grandparents passed away before I was even 10 years old, I never really had much opportunity to speak to them about their experiences. My paternal grandmother was the only one who really remembered the internment years and she lived...Continue reading
Tag: Incarceration Dispersal Dispossession
What to take and what to leave behind
When I taught ELL at a secondary school, one of the oral assignments I used to give was to ask students to talk about 3-5 important things they would bring to their new homes. Now as I think about my parents and the evacuation and how difficult this must have been for my family and...Continue reading
Returning to Steveston
When I was 11 my family moved from Montreal to Steveston. My father was a fisherman and didn’t want to commute from Montreal anymore. I remember how shocked I was walking down Moncton Street and seeing so many Japanese people. I had never seen so many, it felt like being in a foreign country. As...Continue reading
“Senso no mae”
My grandparents and my parents had a unique timeline. “Senso no mae” referred to their life before the evacuation and somehow, they never really had a word or phrase they used for the evacuation. Painful memories-best to forget??
The Sato Gene
Most of what I learned of the internment was briefly taught in school, and from the MJCCA. The suffering and loss was not described in a personal level in my family. I learned much of my family’s involvement as an adult, but we had always held on to things, and loathed to waste, keeping careful...Continue reading
Incarceration, Dispersal, and Dispossession
In my early teens, I took a tour through incarceration campsites. It was the first time I was able to contextualize my grandparents’ wartime lives; during the time when they should’ve been planning their futures, they were instead forced to exist in limbo for years. I don’t think it’ll ever be possible for me to...Continue reading
Family History
Every time I think about my family history, I come to realise just how much I’m missing. What I do know comes largely from questions put to my grandmother when I was an adult, and so much of my grandfather’s life remains a mystery. My grandmother was born in Vancouver, where her parents owned a...Continue reading
Rapids and Replica
It’s not the 1940s, but a whole slough of inheritance, littered with dead leaves and charged with memory, weighed in greyscale, nets cast and prey caught, hundreds upon hundreds upon thousands of voices, each curing the others in moonlight, quicksand, some arc of cello, languid and long, half stretching and half succumbing, just letting itself...Continue reading
Topping sugar beets
Words like “topping” and “thinning” were used often when my family would talk about working in the sugar beet fields. I never really thought about what they really meant until I went on the sugar beet trip in 2019. Someone demonstrated how the tops of the giant beets were hacked off using the very large...Continue reading
First winter
My mom’s family are story tellers. Family gatherings and dinners would usually end up with them talking about their past – growing up in pre-war Steveston and then the war years in Turin, Alberta working the sugar beet fields. And their stories would often include some humour which would result in much laughter. I think...Continue reading
Strongest memory from the wartime years
I don’t have many memories from that time. However, I remember my mother saying that she had to take me to the sugar beet fields with her. I can kind of remember those days when my sister and I were left under the shade of trees. Many of the sugar beet workers came from the...Continue reading
Parents never spoke about the evacuation
I was four at the time. My sister Naomi was two. We don’t remember much of that time. Like many of the Issei, our parents never spoke about the evacuation so we didn’t know too much about it or how it affected our parents and family. My father never spoke about it. All that I...Continue reading
Property dispossession
In Mount Lehman, my parents built the farm from scratch. They had a two storey, eight room house. Plus they had a picker house and barns. They also had chickens. They owned a truck to transport fruit to the Empress jam factory. Before they were forcibly removed, my father rented the property and sold the...Continue reading
Incarceration, Dispersal, and Dispossession
My family is from Kumamoto (on my Dad’s side) and Fukuoka and Hiroshima (on my Mom’s side). They then moved to New Westminister (on my Dad’s side), Pitt Meadows, and Maple Ridge (on my Mom’s side). Eventually, they ended up on farms around Lethbridge. My grandparents definitely did not talk about what happened. On my...Continue reading
The Impact of Dispersal and Dispossession
The uprooting of the Japanese Canadian community irreparably slashed the social fabric that had previously provided threads of connection between and among friends and families. Formerly strong bonds were severed by time and distance. Many JCs, especially the Issei and older Nisei, sadly never had a chance to see some of their friends or family...Continue reading
The Void (Incarceration, Dispersal, and Dispossession)
While I was certainly made aware that the incarceration, dispersal, and dispossession of Japanese Canadians occurred and that my family was affected by these events, I have never felt as though I feel how I should feel about it. Perhaps the previous thought requires further unpacking… For better or for worse, the treatment of Japanese...Continue reading
Barrel of shiner eggs
When she and I visited Ucluelet for the first time since 1942, my Bachan told me so many stories. One I would like to share is about her job. She was only about 14 when the evacuation order came. She had been working at a cannery for “shiners” as she calls them, beheading and gutting them for piece-meal pay.Continue reading
Fun, Friendship, and I Don’t Know
In Greenwood, there were so many children that it was fun—at my age, eight or nine, ten. Lots of friends to play with! We were out there all night, playing! Kick the Can, and… you know, there’s a lots of games that we played. But I had one particular friend. He was, uh… I forget...Continue reading
Pre-war, war and post-war
My father’s family were fisherman before the war. They had several boats and owned property on River Road on Lulu Island when they were forced from the west coast. They spent the war years from 1942-1945 in Taylor Lake, a self-supporting community close to 100 Mile House. They cut jack pine in the winter for...Continue reading
The hard work to build back
Landscapes of Injustice provided amazing documentation of the Komori properties. The files were hundreds of pages long. They owned two pieces of property on Lulu Island in Eburne: acerage for their house which included a small vegetable garden and fruit trees and the other for a boathouse with rudimentary accommodation for a few renters. They...Continue reading
I’ve always lived where my family is from
We all grew up in the so-called former “protected zone”. There was no missing piece to my family history growing up. My great-grandfather, a libertarian, sold his own boat. They never lived in the camps. Still, we’re a part of this community. Sometimes, in research, I find one of the names that I’m always watching...Continue reading
The War Years and Beyond
When the war began in 1941 both my parents were attending the University of BC. Their parents were busy and successful in their respective work in the sawmill industry and retail business.Continue reading
Incarceration, dispersal and dispossession
I believe that the collective response by the Japanese Canadian elders was to forget this painful part of history. In some way they may have felt that they must have done something to deserve such unjust actions of the Government. I think this is the primary reason no one spoke about internment growing up in...Continue reading
War years
When the Japanese Canadians were required to relocate a minimum of 100 miles from the Coast, the family decided to move to Alberta to work in the sugar beet fields. This decision was made so that the family could remain together as there was much uncertainty about the future at this time. (L) Yui Higo ...Continue reading
Port Alberni to Hastings Park
My Mother’s family were from Port Alberni, and had to get rid of their stuff in order to be shipped-off to Hastings Park. The adults built a huge bonfire, and burned books and possessions deemed ‘too Japanese’. Though she could feel the fear from the adults, she just took all the uncertainty in her stride....Continue reading