Torn Apart

by Susan Aihoshi

  Sachi and her family also moved to Toronto after the war. She and Mary saw each other at least once a year. They seldom talked about the internment years, but often reminisced about Maggie, Ellen, Girl Guides and Oxford Street, as well as tennis and Revels and Rags.

  Maggie became a teacher like Mary, until she married and had five children. Despite her busy life she wrote Mary regularly. In 1984 she and Ellen flew to Toronto for an emotional reunion with Mary and Sachi.

  Two years later Mary returned to Vancouver for the first time since 1942. Harry took her to see what was left of their old neighbourhood. 2321 Oxford Street had been sold in 1943 and was torn down, along with several other homes in the block, including Sachi’s. An apartment building now stood in their place. The furniture that the families had left behind and the special things they’d stored in their attics had all been lost long ago.

  But the Girls’ Day dolls and Boys’ Day banners that Mary’s mother had shipped to her sister in Montreal were returned to the family after the war. Mrs. Kobayashi gave the Boys’ Day banners to Tad when his first son was born, and the Girls’ Day dolls to Mary when she had her first daughter.

  Mr. Kobayashi worked in several drugstores until his retirement in 1965. Mrs. Kobayashi continued to do sewing work as long as she lived.

  On March 31, 1949, Japanese Canadians were finally allowed to vote in federal elections anywhere in Canada. Mr. and Mrs. Kobayashi lined up at their local municipal polling station in the first election in which they could vote. They made sure to cast their ballots in every election after that — municipal, provincial or federal — for the rest of their lives. In 1988 the entire Kobayashi family went to Ottawa to march on Parliament Hill in support of the redress movement that sought an apology from the government for the injustices against Japanese Canadians during the war.

  Historical Note

  The Early Years

  British Columbia in the 1800s was vast and largely undeveloped. But by the first half of the twentieth century, the province was growing and prospering with the help of large groups of immigrants from China, Japan and India. Yet B.C. remained British to the core. The majority of the population was white and Anglo-Saxon, and those in power — politicians and business owners — strongly disliked any minorities who were not.

  The first official immigrant from Japan came to B.C. in 1877; many more arrived in the following years. In Vancouver, several Japanese-owned stores and boarding houses opened near Hastings Mill and around Powell Street. By the 1890s, this area became known as Japantown.

  Despite their growing numbers, Chinese and Japanese Canadians were denied the vote in 1895. They couldn’t hold public office or become lawyers, pharmacists, architects, chartered accountants or teachers. To practise in British Columbia, Japanese doctors and dentists had to obtain degrees from elsewhere in Canada, the U.S. or Japan, but still could not work in B.C. hospitals.

  As more Asian immigrants arrived, opposition against them grew. In 1907 angry whites smashed shop windows in Vancouver’s Chinatown and the adjacent Powell Street area. The 1908 “Gentlemen’s Agreement” with Japan restricted the number of male immigrants per year to four hundred; this number was reduced to one hundred and fifty in 1928.

  World War I broke out in 1914. B.C. rejected the repeated enlistment efforts of about two hundred Japanese Canadian volunteers, so in 1916 they travelled to Alberta. There they joined Canadian army battalions and fought heroically in Europe. Surviving veterans were guaranteed the right to vote, but the promise wasn’t honoured until 1931.

  With so many people out of work during the Great Depression, resentment against visible minority immigrants only intensified. They frequently took unwanted jobs, at wages lower than white people would have received, and were then accused of stealing jobs from them. Even more disliked were immigrants who succeeded despite the many disadvantages they faced.

  Pearl Harbor and After

  After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Prime Minister Mackenzie King’s government, encouraged by a few influential B.C. politicians, enacted a fateful series of measures that would displace the entire Japanese Canadian population on the west coast. The first took place on January 14, 1942, when Ottawa invoked the War Measures Act to remove all “enemy aliens” from a so-called protected area. This same legislation had been used during World War I to relocate Ukrainian immigrants from their homes and put them in internment camps.

  At first the Japanese community believed that only men who had not yet been naturalized (taken Canadian citizenship after being permanent residents) had to leave the 160-kilometre (100-mile) protected zone on the B.C. coast. The men were sent to primitive road camps in remote areas. But by February, Ottawa declared that all persons of Japanese racial origin — man, woman or child — had to evacuate the coast, including those who were naturalized or had been born in Canada. Families often had only a few hours to sort through and pack up a lifetime of possessions. Even those who had time to store their belongings eventually found that they had lost irreplaceable family heirlooms.

  To cope with this massive evacuation, the B.C. Security Commission was formed in early March. Vancouver’s Hastings Park became a “clearing centre” for people removed from the coast. Its exhibition buildings were converted into crude lodgings. Men were separated from their families and sent to road camps, while women and children were eventually shipped to detention centres in B.C.’s interior. Anyone objecting to the separation or resisting orders was shipped to remote prisoner-of-war camps in Petawawa and Angler in Ontario.

  Mail was censored and a dusk to dawn curfew was imposed. Cars, cameras and radios had to be given to the Custodian of Enemy Alien Property. All property owned by persons of the Japanese race had to be turned over to the Custodian too.

  The community was plunged into enormous turmoil, which intensified in the later months of 1942. Families were torn apart, education was disrupted, businesses were shut down and thriving neighbourhoods were uprooted and destroyed.

  To avoid separation, some families from fishing or farming centres left the province altogether to work on sugar-beet farms in Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario. There they often endured back-breaking work and harsh living conditions. By October 1942 over twenty-two thousand Japanese Canadians had been forcibly removed from the B.C. coast. Of these, seventy-five percent were Canadian citizens (sixty percent born in Canada and the rest naturalized). This is known as “the first uprooting.”

  Detention Centres

  Japanese Canadians were sent to “ghost towns” — old mining towns — in the B.C. interior, where local people hoped that an influx of newcomers would revive their flagging economies. Even so, there was considerable initial resistance by those afraid of the Japanese. Derelict buildings were roughly modified to provide housing, or crude cabins were built from green lumber that warped and let in the cold during the first hard winter. If accommodation wasn’t ready when the evacuees arrived, they had to live in tents. For those used to the relative comforts of a big city, the lack of running water and electricity was extremely difficult.

  Life in the internment camps was hardest for the Issei, or the first generation. They had left Japan with dreams of doing well in their adopted country and had laboured for years to become farmers, fishermen, shopkeepers or business owners. It was mostly the Issei who were affected in January 1943 when the Custodian of Enemy Alien Property disposed of Japanese Canadians’ property without their consent. Land, buildings, vehicles and goods were sold at appallingly cheap prices. The money was used to pay for the auctioneers and realtors, as well as for storage and handling charges. Any cash remaining went towards the upkeep of the evacuees in the detention camps. Some people even received bills for storage of their confiscated goods! Japanese Canadians paid for their own internment, a condition prohibited for prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention of 1929.

  But in spite of all these setbacks, the people persevered. Even though the B.C. government refused to educate the children of
the evacuees, the community convinced the Security Commission to establish elementary schools in every centre. Because housing had to be built first, most schools opened late in 1942, and some only in April 1943. The person chosen to supervise this school system was the remarkable Hide Hyodo.

  Only eighteen years old, she began teaching in 1926 at a public school in the village of Steveston, where many Japanese families lived. She could not even speak Japanese! Shortly afterward, the provincial government made it illegal for Japanese Canadians to obtain teaching certificates. Miss Hyodo was also the only woman among the four delegates chosen by the Japanese Canadian Citizens League to petition the federal government for the franchise in 1936.

  Beginning in October 1942, she worked tirelessly from her base in New Denver. She personally selected and trained volunteer high-school students to teach in the ghost towns of the Slocan Valley as well as Tashme, located near Hope. Miss Hyodo visited each of the seven camps monthly to oversee the student teachers, and helped organize the first formal teacher training session in New Denver in the summer of 1943. Families were pleased that their children were receiving an education again, and school provided a welcome routine for those whose lives had been so drastically disrupted.

  In the spring of 1943, families planted gardens in all the camps. People adapted to their new life and the Nisei came into their own. With better weather, the young people spent little time in the small and crowded cabins, enjoying instead their picturesque surroundings. Although some came from farms, fishing villages or other remote parts of the province and others from the big city of Vancouver, everyone was equal now. Freed from curfew, they could gather for social events, and community life began to thrive. Though some restrictions remained, the RCMP turned a blind eye when the Japanese fished, listened to radios and used cameras. All the prohibited items could be readily ordered by mail through the Eaton’s catalogue!

  By 1944 the evacuees were becoming restless. Many Issei discovered that their property had been sold without their consent, leaving them bitter and resentful. In August Mackenzie King declared: “It is a fact no person of Japanese race born in Canada has been charged with any act of sabotage or disloyalty during the years of war.” But he then announced a program to disperse Japanese Canadians across Canada by separating the “disloyal” from the “loyal,” and “repatriating” the disloyal to Japan, though many of these people had never been in Japan. Slowly realizing that their former homes were lost, Japanese Canadians began moving east to other provinces. This is the beginning of “the second uprooting.”

  In January 1945 those remaining in the camps were forced to choose between repatriation to Japan or immediate relocation east of the Rockies. Over ten thousand people, uncertain of their future in other provinces — all of which had expressed their unwillingness to receive them — signed for repatriation. Many were Canadian-born children of the Issei, for whom repatriation really meant exile.

  Also in January 1945, the Canadian government, under pressure from the British government, finally agreed to allow Japanese Canadians to enlist. About one hundred and fifty volunteered. Less than half saw active service before Japan surrendered in September, after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August.

  After the War

  When Japan was defeated, many of the Japanese Canadians who had signed for repatriation withdrew their signatures. In 1946 about four thousand were still deported. Half of these were Canadian-born and one-third of those were children under the age of sixteen.

  When Japan surrendered in 1945, Japanese Americans could immediately return to their homes on the coast. The Canadian government did not allow Japanese Canadians to return to the coastal areas of British Columbia until nearly four years after the war ended. On April 1, 1949, all restrictions imposed under the War Measures Act were finally lifted. Japanese Canadians finally were given full citizenship rights, including the right to vote and the right to return to the west coast. But there was no home to return to. The Japanese Canadian community in B.C. no longer existed.

  In the following years, the Issei were reluctant to talk about what had happened. They had lost everything they had worked for and could not get it back. Their children, the Nisei, also faced great difficulties in re-establishing their lives, but their relative youth, combined with hard work, enabled them to move on and eventually prosper. They too seldom spoke of the war years.

  Redress and Restitution

  Several decades passed before a sense of wartime grievances began to emerge with the redress movement of the 1980s. In January 1984 the National Association of Japanese Canadians sought an official acknowledgement of the injustices endured by the community. Over the next four years, rallies and meetings for this cause took place with support from churches, unions, multicultural groups and civil liberties associations.

  On September 22, 1988, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney announced a Redress Settlement which acknowledged the offences against the Japanese Canadians during and after World War II. The settlement provided financial compensation and a review and amendment of the War Measures Act and relevant sections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, so that no Canadian would ever again be subjected to such injustice. The Japanese Canadian Redress Foundation was established to raise public awareness of the community’s past experiences. Prime Minister Mulroney gave the following speech to the House of Commons on that historic day:

  I know that I speak for Members on all sides of the House today in offering to Japanese Canadians the formal and sincere apology of this Parliament for those past injustices against them, against their families, and against their heritage, and our solemn commitment and undertaking to Canadians of every origin that such violations will never again in this country be countenanced or repeated.

  Glossary

  arigatō gozaimasu: thank you very much

  baachan: grandma

  baka: fool, idiot

  bentō: a packed lunch

  bonsai: potted dwarf tree

  furoshiki: a square cloth used for wrapping and carrying things

  geechan: grandpa; see jiichan

  hakujin: white person(s)

  Hina Matsuri: Girls’ Day (March 3)

  Issei: first-generation Japanese person

  Jan-Ken-Pon: rock, paper, scissors game

  jiichan: from ojiichan; grandpa; see geechan

  jūdō: a Japanese martial art

  kimono: traditional Japanese costume for girls and women

  manjū: sweet bean-paste bun

  miso: soybean paste, a staple in Japanese cooking

  mukashi, mukashi, ōmukashi: in ancient times, long, long ago

  nihonjin: Japanese person(s)

  Nisei: second-generation Japanese person

  ocha: tea, usually green

  ofurō: communal bathhouse

  ohashi or hashi: chopsticks

  ohayō: good morning

  oishii: delicious, tasty

  ojiisan: old man, usually a relative or family friend

  okayu: a gruel made from leftover rice and water

  okazu: an everyday main dish, usually with meat or fish and vegetables

  omedetō gozaimasu: very best wishes

  onigiri: rice ball(s)

  origami: Japanese art of paper folding

  ozōni: soup traditionally served on New Year’s Day

  sake: rice wine

  sakura mochi: rice cake(s) wrapped in cherry-tree leaves, traditionally served on Girls’ Day

  sayonara: goodbye

  senbei: rice crackers

  shikata-ga-nai: it cannot be helped

  sushi: vinegared rice

  tadaima: I’m home

  urusai: annoying, a nuisance

  yancha: naughty, mischievous

  yancha-bōzu: naughty boy

  Spellings in the glossary are taken from Kenkyusha’s New Japanese-English Dictionary. The author always used the spelling “Geechan” when writing to her grandfather.

  Images an
d Documents

  Image 1. Watching the Asahi baseball team play “brain ball” was a common activity for Japanese Canadians before Canada declared war on Japan. Shown is the last Asahi team in 1941.

  Image 2. Girls’ Day (Hina Matsuri) dolls (shown on the shelf) were treasured heirlooms, passed down from mother to daughter.

  Image 3. Japanese Canadians’ fishing boats from as far north as Port Rupert were taken to the Annievile Dyke near Vancouver and held there. Many were so badly damaged that they sank.

  Image 4. This notice regarding “prohibited areas” appeared in the Vancouver Sun and Province newspapers on June 19, 1942.

  Image 5. All Japanese Canadians over the age of sixteen had to carry identity cards such as this one belonging to Kimiko Saito. The cards were stamped either “Canadian Born” or “Naturalized” and were signed by the RCMP.

  Image 6. After the Japanese air force bombed Pearl Harbor, distrust turned to fear. This Yellow Peril board game reflected the feelings that gripped the country.

  Image 7. Conditions at the remote road camps were often primitive.

  Image 8. Families were allowed only limited luggage when being sent to the internment camps.

  Image 9. Japanese Canadians were forced to relocate to small “ghost towns” situated outside the protected area 100 miles (160 km) inland from the B.C. coast.

  Image 10. The clothing worn by the evacuated Japanese Canadians often turned out to be unsuitable once they reached the remote and isolated internment camps.

  Image 11. Though the scenery was beautiful, the rustic housing in New Denver proved challenging, particularly for those used to living in a city and having running water and electricity.