No one is born hating another person.
This past spring, I told Reverend Jenny Carter about my plan to visit East Lillooet. She knew there was flooding around Cache Creek and she asked the reason for my visit. Through Jenny’s adept questioning and enthusiastic encouragement, I realized that I had a responsibility to tell my story. When the Nisei are gone—my generation, second-generation Japanese Canadians—there will be no living memory of this part of our history.
FAMILY AND COMMUNITY
As a little girl I asked myself: “How could I be so fortunate to have been born in Prince Rupert?”
Two of my favorite words, that shaped my self-image in childhood, were Prince and Rupert. Prince Rupert. It was so magical. Prince must mean that I was a Princess! I felt almost superior to other children. I felt a child’s profound pride whenever I wrote my address: Shuko Miwa, Seal Cove, Prince Rupert, British Columbia. I delighted in entering it onto every book I possessed. It still holds magic for me.
My family lived in Seal Cove, a tiny fishing village located several miles outside of Prince Rupert. Before the war, it featured a cold-storage plant and canneries. Because of their experience in, and comfort with, the fishing industry, Japanese immigrants were drawn to it. Most of them originated from islands in southern Japan: Hiroshima and Kagoshima. Perhaps Seal Cove felt familiar. It was surrounded by water and offered an abundance of seafood. Our daily diet was comprised of shrimp, crab, black cod, and halibut. All you could eat!
My parents were from Shizuoka-Ken. It is a coveted destination close to Tokyo—home to Mt. Fuji, endearingly referred to as Fuji-san. Shuzuoka-Ken also produced some of the finest green tea and Japanese oranges. So why would they leave?
My father’s uncle Mochida was a successful entrepreneur who had fallen in love with Prince Rupert. Amongst other structures, he had built the two hotels there and needed assistance to administer them. My father was a graduate of teachers’ college. He responded to his uncle’s request for help. My mother was a successful nurse and followed my father to Prince Rupert a year later.
Father became the administrator for the Seal Cove Mochida Rooms. It was a huge, multistoried wood structure. Rooms in the upper floors, restaurant, and grocery store on the main. We lived in the rear of the building. My father had also been selected for the role of secretary of the Japanese Association of British Columbia.
As one child arrived after another, it became necessary for my mother to seek employment to augment Father’s income. This is when she began her menial work in the city. She also worked in the Seal Cove cannery and volunteered in a nurse’s role in the Japanese community. She and Father also taught the Japanese–Canadian children to read and write basic Japanese.
During the day, we Japanese–Canadian children attended the Seal Cove Elementary School, along with children whose families had immigrated from Norway and Sweden, and whose fathers participated in the fishing industry.
The Christian churches, mainly the Anglican and United, took a keen interest in the welfare of the Japanese immigrants and their Canadian-born children. In return the Japanese were receptive to their kindness and several of us joined the Anglican and United Churches. We, in Seal Cove, attended the kindergarten the Anglicans provided, with a Miss Kathleen Lang, a missionary, a mentor, and our friend. She spoke Japanese to the Issei, and when we were relocated into the Interior, she followed us so that she could continue to minister and exercise responsibility for our welfare. 1. Remember her. . .
Our idyllic life in Seal cove came to an abrupt end. The airbase was to be built there, which necessitated our removal – our first evacuation. Our homes were all demolished. Our father had to make a quick decision – so he decided to venture on his own and started a business in Price Rupert. Miraculously, the grocery business thrived- our parents worked from early morning to late at night to make it successful!
During this time, however, we became more and more anxious as we heard ominous rumors of war with Japan. [Archivist’s note: Everything intensified when Japan bombed Pearl Harbour December 7, 1941].
The political parties at that time were debating the Bill to Enfranchise Citizenship to Asians and Indigenous People. The Liberals and Conservatives vehemently opposed it, while the CCF (NDP) were in favour. Then there appeared an election. Politicians mobilized. The Japanese Canadians became the target – the object of hate. We were mercilessly demonized. We were accused of subversion and treason and described as disloyal, treacherous, traitorous, and named “the Yellow Peril.” The politicians incited and inflamed the Canadian population.
The Canadian public became fearful of us. This, then, confirmed an election win to those who opposed the Japanese. A shoo-in! [Archivist’s note: Beginning February 24, 1942, some 12,000 Japanese Canadians were taken from their homes on the west coast without charge or due process. ]2.
Dale continues. . .
The Liberal government continued its policy to remove the Japanese from the coast to parts of the Interior. Many of the fathers and Nisei sons were sent to hard labour at Road Camps. Did you know that the Hope Princeton highway was built by them – there was no heavy equipment in those days; it was just shovels. The Yellowhead Highway was similarly built. Some were sent to Ontario.
The mothers and children were forced to congregate at Hastings Park (Vancouver) first, and from there to Internment Camps. The fathers were eventually able to join their families in the Internment Camps.
I will take you, first, to our departure from Prince Rupert, thence to our arrival at Hastings Park.
Picture a long train – waiting for all of the Japanese of Prince Rupert and surrounding areas to board.
It was eerily quiet. Not one person came to see anyone off. Two of us, my sister and I, stood alone. We were studying the direction toward town, waiting for Pat Stewart, who had been my sister’s best friend. We were expecting, hopeful, that at any moment she would arrive! She had promised that she would come, so we waited, the conductor still on the platform, the clock ticking. Then we thought we saw her, but it was only the hope-inspired imagining of two little girls. She never appeared. Heartbroken, sad, lonely, we boarded the train as the conductor beckoned. I still feel that pain.
My next memory, the following day, on the bus I overheard a Seal Cove lad jokingly chiding the bus driver, as we neared Hastings Park. “I hear we are going to be put in cattle stalls,” the boy said. That was when I understood why we were going to Hastings Park. My first thought was – I hope it’s clean!
[Archivist’s note]Although the livestock building had been whitewashed and the floors fumigated, it felt like an abattoir. People were given straw mattresses to sleep on.
Dale continues . . .
We, the Miwas, entered the huge barn, rows of stalls ahead. I led. I spotted two unoccupied stalls. I called back to mother: “Hurry Mom, there were two stalls not taken.” We all ran, Mother, with a baby in her arms, dragging our luggage. We were jubilant. Then a stranger arrived and announced that they belonged to someone else. We sought stalls elsewhere. We found two more. We considered ourselves fortunate, watching other families frantically scurry, seeking. Although Dad wasn’t there (he was in Vancouver), Mother, my four siblings and myself had two stalls side-by-side. As we’re about to unpack, my mother gasped–“I can’t find my purse!” Everything was in that small, brown purse; all our resources, resources that had to see us through whatever was to come. My heart pounds as I tell you about this now. Mother found it in the trough in a former stall.
I took great exception to the bathroom facilities! There were two long troughs, parallel to each other, water flowing in both. The stalls were beyond. Obviously, the drinking troughs were for the livestock. Now, on each side of the troughs, clean planks were nailed onto the edge of both sides of the troughs—it became our toilet. It took me a long time to try it. It was so embarrassing even for a child—no privacy whatsoever. Stupidly, I finally tried, and nearly fell in backward. I never ever sat on it again. There were two flushing toilets outside the barn.
There were 11 showers for 2,000 people.
I don’t recall one single meal yet remember the utensils we used. All metal: metal mugs, metal plates. . . I recall reading in [Ken] Adachi’s book about non-Japanese Canadian kitchen staff saying: “they will make every effort to educate them [us] to the correct standard of proper diet.” 3. Hmmm –they must be turning in their graves…Their offspring are crazy about sushi!!!
One day, our father arrived to announce that we were going to be sent to Minto – an abandoned mining a total population of six adults. We bid farewell to our Prince Rupert friends – who would soon be assigned to prison camps.
Follow Dale in the next segment — Minto and the continuing story
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Footnotes:
1. “ Issei – the first generation is a Japanese language term used by ethnic Japanese in countries in North and South America to specify the Japanese people who were the first generation to immigrate there.” Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issei#::text=Issei%20(%E4%B8%80%E4%B8%96%2C%20%22first%20generation%22)%20is%20a%20Japanese,first%20generation%20to%20immigrate%20there.
2. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/internment-of-japanese-canadians#::text=Beginning%2024%20February%201942%2C%20around,Coast%20until%201%20April%201949.
3. Adachi, Ken. The Enemy That Never Was, McLelland and Stewart, 1976.
Credit:
Images of men stuffing mattresses with straw courtesy of website: Landscapes of Injustice.
Remaining images of Hastings Park courtesy Hastings Park 1942 | Internment at Hastings Park
Images of Miwa family courtesy Dale Johnston
Map courtesy Seal Cove, British Columbia Tide Station Location Guide (tide-forecast.com)