SUMIKO YOSHIDA PUTTERS ABOUT HER KITCHEN, mixing batter for tempura and slicing sweet potatoes, carrots and green peppers that will surface golden and sizzling hot. She hums a soft melody while slipping the vegetables and prawns into a pot of hot oil. Her Toronto apartment kitchen is tiny, but Sumiko mastered the art of making fabulous meals in cramped quarters long ago.
Preoccupied with the task at hand, she jumps when the doorbell rings. It must be Ida, her sister-in-law. They have invited her to dinner to celebrate the news about the Chemainus reunion. Her husband, Shige, answers the door.
“Hi, Ida,” she calls.
“Hello, Sumi. Smells wonderful in here.”
“It’ll be ready soon,” Sumiko says, checking to make sure the tempura is bubbling gently. She sets last-minute condiments on the table while Shige and Ida chat on the couch. Listening to him tell his sister about the mural, Sumiko wonders how he will make it through the coming year. He is like a kid wielding a prize trophy when his boy scout accomplishments come under the spotlight. She is his ballast on such occasions, her calm, assured manner a steadying influence on the heady mix of ego and vindication of past wrongs.
The tempura sweetens the air. Sumiko smiles her unassuming smile and notices the afternoon light fall across her husband’s thin shoulders. Shige is too busy talking to catch her eye.
“The murals’ society has chosen a picture of me in my scout uniform,” Shige says, his eyes as bright as the day he formed the 2nd Chemainus troop.
“Is that so?” Ida says, watching Sumiko set a steaming tray on the table and motion her over. Pushing herself up off the couch, she adds, “We’re all proud of you, Nii-san. And after all these years. . . .”
“Yes, it’s really something, isn’t it?” Shige says, chuckling.
After dinner, Shige buries himself in his study, perusing his scouting paraphernalia. In addition to trophies, flags, badges, and certificates of merit, he compiled three large albums from material gathered during his years as a scoutmaster. The albums contain an autographed photograph, telegrams and letters from Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of the scout movement, and news clippings hailing the accomplishments of his troops. Among many photos is one dating back to the first gathering of his Chemainus troop on June 23, 1930.
Examining the picture, Shige swells with pride at the boys’ earnest enthusiasm. Although he alone was responsible for creating the troop, Shige relied on issei leaders to support his goal and form the troop’s executive. Looking stern but proud, they surround him in front of the community hall.
All but one are issei. Sitting at Shige’s feet is the president, Reverend Eric Robathan. Studying his face, Shige recalls the Anglican priest’s gentle, loving manner and outspoken support during years of intense racial hostility.
He turns a page and notices an article the reverend wrote for the newspaper in 1931. Lifting his magnifying glass to read the fine print, Shige scans the familiar history of the movement. Robathan noted that twenty-five boys attended the first camp on the Dorsetshire coast in 1909, a year after Shige was born in Victoria. In just over two decades, the movement spread to 42 countries with an enrollment of nearly two mil-lion boys, promoting international brotherhood, comradeship, peace and love.
Shige vaguely remembers the reaction to the article. Not everyone in Chemainus was pleased that Robathan had pointed to the only Japanese troop in Canada as a model of the scouting spirit, but the boys were ecstatic. Praising Shige and his patrol leaders, the priest reported that the troop was “making splendid headway. The boys are putting forth every effort to make their troop ‘second to none’ and a credit to the community.”
Shige reads on, recalling the scout meeting when everyone came with a copy inside their shirt pockets. They took his words so seriously back then, and discussed his ideas among themselves.
“What part will these scouts of the 2nd Chemainus troop play in world affairs when they have grown into men?” Robathan asked. “Will they lose sight of those ideals upon which their characters are being built up at present?”
An optimist, Robathan predicted that “the responsibility of bringing about a closer and more intimate relationship between East and West” might fall to them. “Nations have been drawn closer together by modern methods of transportation, radio, etc., but these methods are of no avail unless hearts as well are bound together in a mutual sympathy and understanding of each others’ aspirations, ideals and needs.”
In conclusion, Robathan impressed his young subjects with the ultimate responsibility of scouting. It was a message they could hardly ignore.
“The true spirit of the scout comes from another world than that in which men push and strive for themselves; it comes from a world where honour, truth, unselfishness, and brother-hood rule, the world whose name is the Kingdom of God. All scouts are trustees of that spirit.”
Shige sets the magnifying glass down and stares at the case containing his memorabilia. He had forgotten what Robathan wrote so long ago, but the message is part of him yet. Almost sixty years later, the irony of the reverend’s sentiment does not undermine Shige’s heartfelt belief in the same ideals. After all, he has sacrificed a great deal to prove good can prevail over evil.
Shige’s father is a handsome, adventurous twenty-year-old in 1899 when he leaves Enzan, a village in Yamanashi. Searching for wealth and prestige in America, Shigetoki Yoshida finds work in the vineyards of Fresno, California. His fun-loving and carefree ways notwithstanding, he is a well-educated, clever man who becomes a straw boss to a crew of immigrant labourers. Eight years later, he returns to Japan to marry Kume Ogiwara. A woman from a wealthy family with delicate features and soft, imploring eyes, she is in her early twen-ties when she reluctantly leaves her homeland with a man she barely knows.
Shigetoki’s plans to return to Fresno are foiled, however. In 1907, the couple disembark in Victoria after American authorities refuse them entry because Kume has an eye infection. The city is a bastion of British colonialism, striving to dominate both the physical landscape and nearby Asian and Native Indian enclaves. Fortunately, Bumpei Kuwabara acts as an unofficial interpreter at the customs office and introduces them to the small Japanese community scattered about town. After showing them where to buy food and rent a room, he leaves them to figure out things most take for granted. Neither has seen a flush toilet, so they use it as a wash basin on their first night in the Osawa Hotel.
Shigetoki soon learns that work is not easy to come by here. Immigrants take whatever jobs they can find: gardening, working as domestics for the wealthy, or as bellhops in the Empress Hotel. Some manage to buy or lease land to farm or to start a small business, but there are no major employers looking for pools of cheap labour.
His savings are running out when he learns that coal baron James Dunsmuir is hiring men to clear land for his castle at Hatley Park. Soon he is on the job, learning how to fall old-growth timber in the wilderness west of Victoria.
When he gets paid, Shigetoki rents a small flat in Victoria’s Chinatown and moves his pregnant wife out of their tent on the Dunsmuir lands. On May 16, 1908, Kume delivers her first child in their Fisgard Street flat, thankful a midwife is at hand. But she is an unhappy new mother, pining for the comforts and companionship of life in Japan. Tiny Shigeyuki brings her some solace, and acquaintances with issei women in the neighbourhood help her cope.
After finishing up the Dunsmuir job, Shigetoki takes what-ever odd jobs he can find. Kume bears two daughters in their primitive home, while Shigetoki saves his pennies. In 1912, he opens a pool hall in Ladysmith, unaware that a coal miners’ strike is imminent. It proves to be one of the most bitter, protracted strikes in the region’s history, devastating the economy. Forced to shut down the unsuccessful venture, the Yoshidas move south of Chemainus in 1914, where an Englishman hires Shigetoki to clear portions of his land.
A good-hearted employer, Matthew Howe offers them an unused barn on his property. Shigetoki builds an outhouse and partitions off the hay loft, creating one main room for living and eating, another for sleeping. Matthew helps him install a sawdust burner for heating and cooking, while Shigetoki carves rough furniture and builds a Japanese-style bath out of waste lumber.
A year after settling in the barn, Kume goes into labour with her fourth child. Midwives are not readily available in such remote locations, so Kume expects the local doctor to attend the birth. When he does not arrive, Shigetoki panics and drives into town for help. Naka Taniwa and Miki Mizuta are not midwives, but they agree to come. Some hours later the inexperienced team delivers a healthy girl, and Shigetoki finally stops pacing. In three years, Kume relies on her husband alone to coax their fifth child into the world. In 1918, Shigetoki cuts his son’s umbilical cord with shaky hands, wishing he were outside falling timber instead.
Living away from town is lonely for Kume, but their arrival marks a new beginning for the Howe’s only son, Jackie. When he learns the Yoshidas have a six-year-old son, he is at their door the next morning.
Shige opens the door to a skinny boy with a wide grin.
“Want to go fishing?” he asks.
“Why, sure,” Shige says. “I have to ask first, though.” He turns and Kume nods her approval.
Jackie leads his new friend down to the creek. Dappled light bounces off polished rocks as rainbow trout slither down-stream. The boys look at each other.
“Let’s go dig up some worms,” Jackie suggests.
“Where?”
“Up by my place. C’mon.”
They race each other back to Jackie’s house and dig up a can of earthworms in some freshly turned soil. Jackie runs inside and comes out with bits of string and two safety pins.
“Here, tie these strings together,” he says, giggling. His mother steps onto the porch, where the boys are poking safety pins through the string. She can’t remember when she saw her son having so much fun.
Shige grabs the can of worms, and they are off. By noon, they have caught enough trout for everyone’s dinner. They haul their catch back up the hill and stop outside the barn.
“Can you play this afternoon?” Jackie asks.
“Maybe after I do my chores,” Shige replies.
Jackie continues up the path to his house. Halfway there, he turns to wave. Shige is waving his arm high above his head, his other arm heavy with a string offish gleaming in the sun.
That afternoon Matthew drives them to the beach in his 1911 Hupmobile Roadster. As the landscape unfolds, Shige can’t believe his eyes. “We could roam here for hours, Mr. Howe,” he says, “and look at all the sheep and cattle up on the bluff. Can we go see them?”
Jackie turns to his father. “Can we, Dad?”
Matthew smiles. “Don’t get too close. Those cows will be calving soon.”
The boys jump out and scramble up the hill. Matthew watches them go, chuckling under his breath.
In time, Jackie becomes good friends with Shige’s sister, too. The second oldest Yoshida child, Kanako listens for Jackie calling her English name when she steps outside in the morning.
“Connie,” he calls, wistfully. ” Connie, are you ready?”
She looks up the path toward the Howe’s house. Jackie is on his veranda, waving his bony arm. “He looks so cute,” she says, hopping on her bicycle. In no time they are cycling along the dirt road toward town, hair flying as they race down the hill, over the railroad tracks, up past the cemetery, Chinatown, and the mill grounds until they reach the public school on Cedar Street, breathless.
Kanako likes school because she gets to play with other children. But one day at recess, she finds Shige fighting with Takeshi Okada on the grounds. Her brother’s hot temper often gets him into trouble, but this is more serious than usual. Everyone is huddled around the muddy field where the boys are scrapping.
The recess bell rings, but the boys ignore it. Soon Mr. Pritchard, the principal, wades through the ring of onlookers, muddying his galoshes and pants. Kanako watches him pull Shige and Takeshi apart, both of whom have bloody noses. With a hand firmly on the shoulder of each boy, he turns and orders everyone back to class.
Kanako shuffles indoors and slides behind her desk, head hanging. She is a grade below Shige, but three grades are all in one classroom. When Shige and Takeshi walk in five minutes later, only Takeshi slips into his seat. Miss Mclnnes is approaching Shige with a cat-o-nine tails in her hand. He is standing in front of the class, hands behind his back.
“Young man,” the teacher barks, “put out your hands.”
Shige obeys and fixes his stare, determined not to cry. He will not give his teacher or Takeshi that satisfaction.
Everyone jumps at the first crack, and Kanako starts to cry. Shige winces, then there is another crack and yet another. The ordeal continues, but still Shige doesn’t cry. Once or twice, he moves his hands before the strap hits, enraging Miss Mclnnes further. Finally she stops, and Shige returns to his seat. No one moves. By now, Kanako is sobbing.
The morning inches by. Normally an enthusiastic student, Shige sits still while everyone scribbles in their notebooks. He can’t pick up his pencil for a week.
At home, he tells Kanako what happened.
“Takeshi accused me of tripping him when he was running for the football,” Shige says.
“Did you?” Kanako asks.
“Of course not. We were arguing about it, and we got so mad that we started punching each other.”
“Why didn’t Takeshi get the strap too?” Kanako asks. Shige looks down. “Because I’m older than him, that’s why.”
Kanako is preoccupied when she walks up the Howes’ front steps to help Mrs. Howe make butter on Saturday. Anna Howe doesn’t notice that her shy helper is out of sorts and begins pouring buckets of cream into the barrel on the porch. Wearing a crisp apron over her work dress, Anna smiles and begins churning while Kanako waits her turn. They have the butter separated in no time and transfer it onto a large board, which they carry into the kitchen.
Kanako picks up a rolling pin and smooths out the creamy mass on the board. The memory of Shige’s strapping is still vivid, but she feels safe in Mrs. Howe’s big, bright kitchen. When the butter is finished, Kanako fetches a bucket and opens a tap for water to wash the floor. The Howes may be isolated, but they are not without conveniences.
Jackie invites her and Shige to play cards in the evening, so Shige leads his sister back up the trail after supper. As they approach, they can see the inside lights. Mr. Howe has created this thing called electricity using water from Fuller Lake. Inside, Kanako can go to the bathroom without fear of being attacked by a wild animal.
Shige is twelve when his leadership qualities come to the fore. On the first day of school in September 1920, ever-punctual Shige strides into the classroom unnoticed. He sits beside Kinjiro Seko, who towers above his classmates. Having just emigrated from Japan, Kinjiro wants to learn English. Shige welcomes him to Chemainus and turns his attention to the teacher, a dowdy woman with a weight problem that prompts some to whisper “cow” behind her back.
Miss Dwyer calls the roll in her strident voice, pausing at Kinjiro’s name. When she is finished, she walks in front of her desk to address the class.
“All of the Oriental students will now proceed to room number three across the hall,” she announces.
Instinctively, Shige stands up. “I don’t think that’s right,” he says. “I won’t stand for that. I’m sending my students home, and you’re not going to stop me.”
Miss Dwyer is speechless. This boy may only be twelve, but something stops her from bullying him back into his seat. Shige turns to the Japanese students. “Everyone go home,” he orders. The eldest of the Japanese Canadian students, he knows they will obey. Without any fuss, they file out the door.
At home that night, Shige explains what happened.
“I knew it didn’t sound right. I knew it was wrong right away. They are discriminating against us,” he tells his father.
“You acted wisely, son,” Shigetoki replies. “Tomorrow I’ll send a telegram to the Japanese consulate in Vancouver. We’ll have this sorted out soon.”
Sure enough, the consulate negotiates with local school trustees, and the students are back in regular class the following week. But it is not so easy for men like Kinjiro, who cannot ignore hostile hakujin parents demanding the withdrawal of Japanese adults from their children’s classrooms. Foregoing his hopes of learning proper English, he leaves. Like other issei, he will learn what he can on the job at the sawmill. Canadian-born Shige, on the other hand, competes for top marks every year with his arch rival, Evelyn Toynbee.
As work on the Howe’s property diminishes, Shigetoki gets a job as a jitney driver at the sawmill. Waving and smiling at everyone he passes, he moves lumber about the plant in his Ford jitney. “Here comes Henry Ford,” the workers say, laughing as he manoeuvres the little truck like a dinky toy.
Kume’s work offers no such perks. She never goes into town, fitting the needs of the children around laundry, cleaning, and cooking. Shige spares her the task of fetching water from the creek, and Kanako and Chizuko tend their young siblings after school. Pregnant again, she sits down to knit and sew after the children are in bed.
A month after Kumeo is born in 1921, his sister Yachiho starts school. While she adores her father, she can’t abide the name he gave her, which means “battleship.” Perhaps because it matches her stocky build, she is desperate to change it. Even her Japanese friends can’t pronounce it properly, let alone the hakujins.
On the first day of school, the opportunity to give herself a new identity finally arrives. When the teacher asks her name, she stands up proudly and announces, “Ida Yoshida.” It is just a name she likes the sound of. Now it is hers. In her mind, Yachiho ceases to exist.
She is unable to dismiss her father’s drinking and driving so easily. Unreserved, boisterous and full of laughs, Ida loves going places with Shigetoki—even though getting home is often a terrifying journey.
One Sunday afternoon, Shige and Ida accompany their father to the Yoshiki home in Hillcrest, a sawmill town north of Duncan. It is a mild autumn day, and Ida sticks her head out the window as they wind around old-growth stumps left be-hind by loggers. Shige sits in the middle, surreptitiously teaching himself how to drive by watching his father shift gears. He has made a point of it ever since he went through the windshield coming home from the fair in Nanaimo. His father hit a ditch somehow; miraculously, Shige wasn’t badly hurt.
Arriving in Hillcrest, Shigetoki rolls to a stop and beeps his horn outside his friend’s home. Mr. Yoshiki steps onto his porch and waves them inside. As soon as they are indoors, he brings out the sake, prompting nine-year-old Ida to plead with her father.
“Please don’t drink too much, Papa. You’re driving.”
“Quiet!” Shigetoki scolds.
“Yes, Papa,” she murmurs, slouching down at the kitchen table beside her teenage brother.
Several sake later, Shigetoki’s stories are getting more and more hilarious. Finally, Shige nudges his father.
“It’s time to go. Mama will have supper ready soon.”
“Yes, yes. You’re right,” Shigetoki replies, grinning at Shige. “My son is always right, you know,” he says, steadying himself as he pushes away from the table. Ida swallows hard and steels herself for the trip home. Shigetoki weaves toward the truck, trying three times before he manages to haul himself up behind the wheel. With her eyes fixed firmly ahead, Ida concentrates on the resounding thump of hard tires on packed earth. Every time huge stumps loom up before them, she grips the edge of her seat and holds her breath, waiting to crash. But Shigetoki always swerves just in time as he bumps merrily along.
After a near mishap, Shige finally turns to his father. “You better take a rest. I’ll drive.”
“You never drove before. How can you drive?”
“I’ve been watching. I can do it. I’m sure.”
Ida holds her breath while Shigetoki thinks about it. When their father slides over, Shige tramps around to the driver’s seat. Ida clamps her mouth shut, suppressing an urge to shout, “Hurray, Nii-san!” He drives the rest of the way home without incident.
It is still daylight when they get back, and Ida has to collect milk from the Howes. She slides the empty lard pail off the shelf by the door and grabs her little brother’s pudgy hand. Kumeo loves to walk with his big sister, for Ida tells him stories on the way. Mostly, they are grand make-believe stories, but today’s isn’t.
“You should have seen him, Kume,” Ida says, turning a pretend steering wheel in her hands. “Oh, he is a good driver.”
Shige has been expanding various side jobs into full-time work since he finished grade eight when he was thirteen. Every summer he negotiates a berry-picking contract, hiring Chizuko and her friends to pick the loganberries while he makes shipping arrangements. In addition, he sells everything from flower seeds and custom-made shoes to life insurance and newspapers. Money-making ventures aside, he volunteers to serve as spokesman for the issei, most of whom don’t speak English very well. He attends school board and Red Cross meetings, speaking up for his people and correcting errors of fact in the propaganda war threatening to marginalize them further. Shige proves himself a fighter, believing he deserves no less and no more than the next man.
He also takes a keen interest in boy scouts, reading anything he can get his hands on about the movement. Ever since he heard hakujin boys boasting about campouts and jamborees, Shige started eyeing their uniforms and colourful badges. He is sixteen when he applies to join the 1st Chemainus troop, having finally saved enough for a uniform. Some weeks later, the scoutmaster tells him that the troop is full.
Keeping his anger in check, Shige marches off. He knows the rejection is racially motivated and it hurts, but it also fuels his determination to find another way. Soon after, he discovers an ad for the Lone Scouts of America in one of the newspapers he is selling. The Chicago newspaper publisher is the founder of a boy scout correspondence course tailored for American boys in remote locations. Shige applies and waits, bicycling the three miles to the post office on Mill Street every mail day for a reply.
When the first package of material arrives, he beams at the postal clerk. He runs his fingers over his name on the label and hollers “Hurray!” Placing it in his bicycle basket outside, he jostles it about to estimate its weight. Shige pedals home in high spirits, whistling with the wind.
That night he gets to work, sorting out the assignments and books and setting strict deadlines for himself. For the next five years, he studies hard. In 1929, he writes his final exams, achieving the highest possible rank. A year later he receives a warrant from the Boy Scouts of Canada, granting him the authority to form his own troop.
In June 1930, one month after his twenty-second birthday, Shige and his two patrol leaders, Takayoshi Kawahara and Shunichi Isoki, herd eight boys into the Japanese community hall to learn the principles of scouting: to do a good turn every day; to smile and whistle under all difficulties; to be prepared. The first Japanese-Canadian boy scout troop in the British Empire, it swears its allegiance to king and country.
The year before Shige forms his scout troop, Sumiko Takahashi leaves her quiet, isolated life on the Fraser River. Having finished grade eight in New Westminster, Sumiko is going to live with her sister’s family and learn dressmaking in their tailor shop in Chemainus. Her parent’s only Canadian-born child, she is a shy fourteen-year-old when she says goodbye to their houseboat near the Patullo Bridge.
Her childhood is full of memories from the houseboat deck, watching the Fraser flow past as they moved down river during salmon runs. Sojourns on the river aside, she has never set foot outside New Westminster. Now she is boarding a steam-ship bound for Nanaimo, with no idea where Vancouver Is-land is or who will meet her on the other side.
Sumiko doesn’t know her sister very well. A marriage was already arranged for Shimo when she arrived from Japan, so she never lived on the houseboat. Sumiko has never met her sister’s second husband, Suketaro Ota, but he recognizes her when she steps onto the Nanaimo dock. Two silent hours later, he ushers her into their humble home in the back of his tailor shop on Oak Street. Sumiko stands awkwardly in the middle of the kitchen, fiddling with the edge of a pocket on her dress.
Shimo steps into the kitchen with a baby in her arms. “Hello, Sumi. My, how you’ve grown.”
“Yes, Nee-san,” Sumiko replies.
“Come. Sit and we’ll have some tea.”
Sumiko slides into a chair and sighs. While her sister puts water on the stove, she plays with the baby on the floor.
“So, did anyone tell you about all the nice boys we have in Chemainus?”
Sumiko blushes. “No, Nee-san.”
“Well, we’ll have to do something about that, won’t we?” Shimo teases, pouring the tea and sitting down to chat.
Before the week is out, Sumiko has a new friend, but it isn’t a boy. Chizuko Yoshida often comes by to mind the baby or tend to customers. Her family no longer lives in Matthew Howe’s barn but in a house that they bought around the corner on Esplanade. The girls become best friends right away. Like Sumiko, Chizuko spent most of her childhood isolated from friends at school. Happily, that changes for both.
Sumiko meets Chizuko’s brother Shige, too. On his day off from his job at the sawmill, he drives up and down island with Suketaro selling made-to-measure suits in various Japanese communities. But neither take much notice of each other when he comes into the shop. Sumiko is too young and shy, while Shige is so caught up in his business endeavours and scouting activities that he hasn’t time for girls.
During Sumiko’s third summer in Chemainus, Shige’s father decides it’s time his twenty-four-year-old son got married. One evening in 1932, Shigetoki knocks on the door and asks to speak to Suketaro privately. Sumiko thinks little of it and goes to her room, but when her brother-in-law takes her aside two weeks later, her mind starts racing.
“Mr. Yoshida has asked your father if you will marry Shige,” Suketaro begins.
Sumiko says nothing. She is thinking of all the times she has seen Shige: visiting Chizuko in her home, at baseball games, in the tailor shop. She can’t imagine him as her husband. The thought never crossed her mind—or his, from what she can tell.
“What did Father say?” she finally asks.
“Shige will make a good husband. He is reliable, hard-working and honest. He doesn’t drink or gamble. Your father thinks you should accept.”
Sumiko looks out the back window onto the alley that cuts through Kawahara camp. Children run along the boardwalk, playing tag and giggling. She recognizes Shige’s two youngest brothers, Kumeo and Noriyuki. At seventeen, Sumiko knows nothing about marriage except that it is inevitable.
“When? “she asks.
Suketaro smiles. “Probably sometime this fall. But you’ll go home again first.”
On October 26, 1932, Shige dons his navy wool suit and combs his hair with water. He studies his reflection in the mirror, all five feet two inches of it. Fine bones and features belie his tough character. Satisfied with his appearance, he slips down-stairs to get his father. It will take several hours to reach the Takahashis’ houseboat on the Fraser, so they are getting an early start.
Sumiko is still sleeping when Shige and his father cross a lumpy Strait of Georgia in the CPR steamship. By the time they reach Vancouver, she is setting out smoked salmon and sweet bean cakes. Her mother has invited friends to a small ceremony on the houseboat, expecting Shigetoki will arrange for a minister to marry them in Chemainus later that week.
Strolling into her room, Sumiko lifts a wine-coloured dress from the closet. She jiggles the hanger, watching the satin ripple in waves. The cool fabric sends shivers up her spine as it slips to the floor. Then she brushes her curls and applies red lipstick, pressing her lips together like a movie star. She examines her face. Although she isn’t a delicate beauty, her profile is strong and her complexion flawless. The sheen from the satin glows in her large black eyes.
By early afternoon the nervous bride and groom are sipping sake from the same cup, consecrating the marriage in the candlelit room heavy with the sweet musk of incense. Everyone gathers round a sunken table following the ceremony, politely nibbling on manju. Always the entertainer, Shigetoki swaps tall tales and jokes until it’s time to go. When the meal is over, Shige bids his bride an awkward goodbye and leaves with his father.
Sumiko arrives in Chemainus with her parents two days later, expecting the wedding ceremony with the minister. But Shigetoki has arranged nothing, and her parents leave the following day. Saying farewell on the front porch, Sumiko is glum.
“Mr. Yoshida is nonki, Mama. Everyone tells me he means well, but he is careless.”
“We are disappointed too, Sumi,” her mother says. “But we must go now.”
Sumiko nods and waves. She watches them round the corner, knowing she probably won’t see them for years. Her eyes fall on the gnarled fruit trees across the street. As much as she likes her father-in-law, she is upset that he let them down. When she becomes pregnant four months later, Shigetoki finally arranges for a minister to marry them.
Shige happens to be home on his lunch hour when Sumiko goes into labour during the Indian summer of 1933. He walks his eighteen-year-old wife across the street to the Chemainus hospital and returns to work for the afternoon, confident she is in good hands. A nurse sits nearby, monitoring her labour. Sumiko gratefully inhales ether to ease the pain as her baby girl is finally born.
After a week in the hospital, Sumiko brings Mitsi home to a mostly familiar routine. Her mother-in-law cooks all the meals, while Sumiko helps Kume with housework and laundry. When the day’s chores are done, she cradles Mitsi in her arms and strolls down the street to visit her sister and her friend Matsue Taniwa. After chatting for a while, Sumiko hikes back up the hill whispering in Mitsi’s ear.
The following spring she plants sweet peas, sweet williams and candy tuft along the front of the house. Although finding the time isn’t easy, she enjoys gardening. It gives her a break from household chores, which she and Kume share. Luxuries are non-existent, but it is all she expects from life and is con-tent.
Shige is happy too. Although his job as a jitney driver at the sawmill is steady, he hustles side jobs whenever possible to ease the financial strain. Between work and scouting activities, he is hardly ever home. His brothers Tokio and Kumeo see more of him than his wife: they are scouts.
Scouting gives the boys access to a world normally out of bounds. For Tokio, getting to events is half the fun. Ten years younger than Shige, he is in his early teens in the 19308 when the troop sets out for a conference in Bellingham. Bustling about on a Victoria dock, they pray for the weather to co-operate. A thick blanket of clouds obscure the Olympic Mountains across Juan de Fuca Strait. An hour passes and Tokio stamps his feet impatiently, no longer content to study the tough little tugboat that will ease them around the tip of the Olympic Peninsula and down the coast of Washington State.
Everyone is about to lose hope when the southeast winds blow over and the sky clears. The tugboat captain announces, “Seagulls going out to sea, so I think storm is over. Come on board.” Eight boys, two patrol leaders, and Shige spill onto the deck and depart in a cloud of black smoke. Standing on the bow, Tokio sucks in the salt air and thinks of his father venturing across the Pacific. Plying the waters is powerful excitement, heightened by the deafening rumble of the engine at full throttle.
Of the many activities Shige organizes for the. boys, the April 1935 jamboree in Victoria is the highlight. On a beautiful spring day on the Willows exhibition grounds, some 2,500 boy scouts, girl guides, wolf cubs, and Brownies congregate to show off their skills and hear the Chief Scout, Lord Baden-Powell, and his wife applaud their achievements.
Before the honourary couple speak, the 2nd Chemainus troop joins a competition to build a suspension bridge. The boys hustle as a team, tying clove hitches and reef knots around saplings that form the planks, circling trees with rope to suspend the bridge, driving stakes to secure the apparatus. When it is complete, Lord Baden-Powell marches to the centre and offers his approval. “Well done,” he says, leaning forward to shake Shige’s hand.
The scoutmaster beams. Through perseverance and hard work, Shige grasps equality in the white man’s world.
A year later, Sumiko gives birth to a boy. Standing proudly over him in the hospital nursery, they name him Shigeru. But months after bringing their frail bundle home, Sumiko begins to worry. No matter how much she feeds and pampers him, he doesn’t gain weight. Finally, she consults Shige.
“I’ve done everything I can think of, but he isn’t getting better. What should we do?”
“We will take him to doctors in Victoria,” he says. “Don’t worry. We’ll find out what’s wrong.”
The specialists in Victoria inform Sumiko she has a “blue baby,” which means nothing to her except that he isn’t normal. After they return home, his health deteriorates further and they admit him to the Chemainus hospital. Shige and Sumiko sit beside his crib and pray for signs of improvement, but within days six-month-old Shigeru dies.
They stumble home from the hospital, stunned to lose their beloved boy so suddenly. No one warned them he might die. Sumiko shuffles through the front door in a daze. Her three-year-old comes running, and Sumiko crouches down, arms hugging. She carries Mitsi into the living room and sits her on her lap.
“Baby Shigeru is not coming home, sweetie,” Sumiko be-gins.
Mitsi looks into her mother’s face. “Are you crying, Mama? Why isn’t baby coming home?”
“He’s gone to heaven, dear.”
“Heaven? Where’s that?”
“Oh, it’s a very nice place, way up high in the sky.”
“Will he be happy there?”
“Oh yes,” Sumiko replies, pulling Mitsi against her and rocking to and fro. “He will be very happy.”
Shige’s father calls on his friend Mantoku Sakata to per-form the Shinto-Buddhist rites in their home that night. They bring Shigeru home in a simple wooden casket and place him on a table in the living room. Flowers and candles surround the casket as the smell of incense thickens. Sumiko sits in the corner and stares into the flames. Mantoku’s chanting seems so far away. Hours pass. Finally, Shige guides her upstairs, where they both fall into a fitful sleep. The Buddhist blessings of Shigeru’s grandparents are guiding him on his journey to the afterworld, even though his parents are Anglican.
The family huddles around his grave in the Chemainus cemetery the next day, lighting candles and incense as Mantoku chants in a low relentless drone. At specified intervals over the next forty-eight days, the Yoshidas light more candles to help Shigeru complete his journey. In the coming years, they tidy his grave regularly, fixing or replacing the wooden cross as it deteriorates. And every year during the August o-bon festival, they light another candle to welcome his spirit home.
In 1989 when a volunteer worker discovers headstones in a pile of dirt outside the cemetery fence, the wooden cross that marked his grave is decomposed in a rubble of earth. No one knows exactly where he lies any more.
The year after Shigeru’s death, Sumiko has a healthy baby girl. Jean is born on a hot day in July, when ocean breezes mercifully sweep through the hospital room. Breastfeeding her infant later, Sumiko watches the cotton curtains fluttering. Dusk is washing the world outside in a lovely shade of lavender.
At twenty-two, she is well-adjusted to motherhood and happy again. Her memory of Shigeru is fading, and with it her grief. When Mitsi and Shige arrive to see Jean, Sumiko is jubilant. The euphoric phase follows her home from the hospital, but it too fades as piles of laundry, housework, cooking, and caring for the girls occupy her hours. She never complains, even though she no longer has Kume’s help. In Kawabe’s bunkhouse two blocks away, her mother-in-law cooks for bachelors from morning to night.
Five months after Jean is born, Kume and Shigetoki take their youngest son about 100 kilometres west of Tokyo to the prefecture of Yamanashi. They leave Canada on New Year’s Day in 1938, venturing across the Pacific to the heavily populated islands off the coast of Asia.
The purpose of the trip is twofold: to provide Noriyuki with a Japanese education, and to provide a childless aunt and uncle with a son. Although fourteen-year-old Noriyuki takes their surname, he lives with his parents in the town of Enzan, close to his father’s home village. Shigetoki tutors his son until he is ready for school. But during the two years it takes to perfect his Japanese, Noriyuki struggles to gain acceptance.
Strangely, he feels the discrimination here more acutely than anything he encountered in Canada. Even Kume finds she no longer fits into Japanese society after her twenty-one-year absence, so she returns to Chemainus in 1939.
The responsibilities of the Yoshida household fall to Shige and Sumiko. They include keeping Shige’s brother Kumeo in high school until he graduates in 1940. The only Yoshida child to graduate in Canada, Kumeo is an A student who loves mathematics. But he is not altogether happy about being a burden on Shige and Sumiko and feels indebted to his older brothers. Tokio started working at the sawmill in 1933, having left school at fifteen to help make the house payments. He cried the day his father told him to leave school and get a job. Dreams of training as a diesel mechanic died when he joined the ranks of unskilled labourers at the mill. As for Shige, he accepted his responsibility as the oldest son at an early age. But had times and circumstances been different, he might have practised more than his boy scout’s first aid: Shige dreamt of being a doctor one day.
The Yoshida girls are all married by the time Kumeo graduates, neither contributing to the household nor a burden on it. Kanako was seventeen when she married the son of a fisherman on Saltspring Island in 1927. Ida was next, marrying a man who took her to an isolated logging camp outside Ladysmith in 1931 when she was sixteen. In 1932, Chizuko married and moved to Vancouver at the age of twenty-one.
Dreams of their youth were wrapped up in the pages of Eatons’ catalogues, where fantasies about fancy apparel and modern homes lay dormant. Unlike their brothers who sacrified their education, the girls never dreamed of careers outside marriage.
Shortly after Kume returns from Japan in 1939, Tokio muses about going to Toronto to make money. His mother will hear nothing of it, so he reluctantly abandons the idea. He is a good son who laughs easily and takes life as it comes, but at twentyone he feels constrained in Chemainus. With or without Kume’s blessing, he decides to enlist in the air force in 1940. The possibility for adventure aside, it will also be a chance to prove his loyalty to Canada. With any luck, it might even curtail the racism that has denied him opportunities ha^ujin men take for granted.
One Saturday, Tokio leaves work early and meets his friend Satoshi Izumi by the Horseshoe Bay Inn. They wait for the bus in a light drizzle.
“Imagine flying over Europe, Toki,” Satoshi says, dreamily.
“And shooting down Germans. No one will call us yellow then,” Tokio says.
“I can hardly wait ’til we join our old hakujin classmates in uniform.”
“Yeah, won’t they be surprised?” Tokio adds, chuckling.
The bus arrives and they hop on. En route to Duncan, they gaze at the ramshackle homes of the Westholme Indians and the farms of the earliest hakutjin settlers. When the bus rattles into town, they make a beeline for the RCAF recruitment office, blissfully preoccupied as they scurry past NO JAPS ALLOWED signs in the bowling alley and restaurant windows.
Inside the recruitment office, a pleasant young man leads them to a doctor for their physicals. Satoshi’s eyesight is failing, but Tokio passes with ease. Afterwards, he consoles Satoshi over a Chinese meal at Konkui House, trying to keep his own high spirits in check.
Back home, months go by without any word. Finally he acknowledges he isn’t going to get called up. Closing his eyes, he sees the word JAP in large block letters scribbled across his application. It is the last time he will volunteer to put his life on the line for his country.
In June 1941, Sumiko becomes pregnant again. She is thankful Kumeo can help out with expenses now that he is finished school and has a job. When Shige and Tokio’s wages were cut back during the Depression, they got by, but only just. Now that the worst is over, there still isn’t any money to spare.
Sumiko isn’t worried, though. She feels secure in a world that is anything but. Like most women of her generation, she does not encounter racism very often. Lack of exposure to the wider community screens it from her experience. She is six months pregnant when all that changes on December 7, 1941.
Shige and Sumiko are renovating the living room when they hear the broadcast. Shige slides down the ladder and turns the volume up. Sumiko sets down her pail, and they sink into the sofa to hear the newscast. Shige shakes his head back and forth.
“I knew something was going to happen,” he says.
“What now, Shige?” Sumiko asks, rubbing her arms. “Will they invade here next?”
“Who knows, Sumi,” he replies. “Anything is possible.” The chaos begins within the week. Shige disbands his scout troop, fearing any association among them will be suspect. But because of his profile as scoutmaster, the police solicit his help. They need someone to deliver messages from the B.C. Security Commission, the government body that administers the orders-in-council that Parliament passes under the War Measures Act. Shige accepts the responsibility without hesitation. His messenger status notwithstanding, police confiscate his car a few months later. That spring, he tallies up a lot of miles delivering their messages on his bicycle.
Although he believes that co-operating with the law is the ticket to proving the community’s loyalty, he takes exception to one missive in particular. When the police tell Shige to inform all Japanese-born men that they will be shipped to road camps, he is stunned.
“Those men are the breadwinners in their families, and the women and children have no other means of support,” he protests.
“We will take care of them. They will receive welfare,” the constable says.
Shige swallows and shifts his weight. He looks at the rain outside the officer’s window and thinks about the hill he has to climb to reach Chinatown. It is a challenge to cycle from camp to camp, delivering messages between the end of his shift at the mill and the seven o’clock curfew. His throat and chest are tight as he steps outside and hops on his bicycle. Focusing on the pedals, he works every muscle to propel him uphill.
It is the only message that doesn’t affect the Yoshida house-hold, for Shige’s father is in Japan. But that does little to ease the stress: communication ceases for four years. In addition to Shigetoki and Noriyuki, Kanako is also trapped overseas be-cause her husband wanted his ailing parents to meet their grandchildren. Kanako and her children barely survive the war years on meagre rations of rice.
Shige’s main worry is not his father or Kanako but Nori-yuki. After completing university in 1942, he is conscripted into the Japanese navy. Now nineteen, he survives the first heavy bombing, recuperating from burns in a military hospital before returning to duty. The worst comes near the end of the war when he is a fully brainwashed third petty officer. Part of an instalment of 500 battleships near the Philippines, Noriyuki is taking part in early morning training when three submarine torpodeos target his ship. After thirty hours in tropical waters, he is rescued only to be torpedoed again. When the battleship Yamato lifts him from waters near the coast of the Philippines, they are attacked by some 2,000 planes. The Yamato sinks with its remaining crew the next day, when Noriyuki is quietly en route to a naval base. He is among few survivors who are quarantined for six weeks to keep the news from getting out.
As Shige pedals from camp to camp, he has more than Noriyuki’s fate on his mind. The impending arrival of another baby aside, he considers the community’s welfare his responsibility. By getting messages out quickly, he does what he can to alleviate fears fed by rumour.
While her husband is out, Sumiko adds packing to her list of household chores. Nine-year-old Mitsi is in school, but Jean is only five and still at home. One day she finds Sumiko packing the festival dolls she and Mitsi received every Girls’ Day in March.
“Why are you putting them in the box, Mama?” Jean asks. “Won’t they get cold and lonely?”
Sumiko brushes Jean’s thick, black bangs away from her eyes. “See, I’m wrapping all the dolls in blankets to keep them warm while they sleep,” she says.
“Will they be asleep for a long time, Mama?”
“I hope not, dear. I’m sure they will be really happy to see you when we get back,” Sumiko says, setting the last one in the storage chest before closing the lid. The tiny but perfect Japanese empress, dressed in a robin’s egg silk kimono, guards the collective beneath her.
Jean never wakes the empress from her slumber, and she never finds out who does. The cedar chest just disappears.
In early March, Shige learns that the evacuation is scheduled for the very week the baby is due. Unsure what to do, Shige decides to approach Miss Esther Ryan.
A United Church missionary who worked in Japan, she is familiar with Japanese culture, fluent in Japanese and an invaluable asset to the community. A few years after Shige formed his scout troop, Miss Ryan invited Japanese Canadian girls to join her CGIT group. Shige immediately recognized her as an ally.
After picking up the message from the RCMP, he cycles to her home and knocks on the door.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Miss Ryan. I just found out that the ship is coming for us the same week my wife is expecting her baby. She may not be out of the hospital yet.”
“Well, I will stay with her,” Esther says. “The authorities will agree. What else can they do?”
Shige fidgets with the brim of his hat. “Thank you. I will write for permission today.”
“Bring me the letter when it’s written, and I will sign it too,” she says.
Turning to leave, Shige mumbles another thank you. “Sumi will not worry now.”
As it turns out, the turmoil in communities along the B.C. coast is matched by the chaos in the administration of the evacuation. The ship scheduled for Chemainus in March is delayed a month, making the arrangements with Miss Ryan unnecessary.
Sumiko gives birth to a healthy girl on March 15, 1942. On the eve of the evacuation five weeks later, Shige is at the police station. He is getting last-minute details on evacuees from Duncan, Hillcrest and Paldi, who will be leaving on the same ship in the morning. Insulating herself from uncertainty, Sumiko is nursing Virginia as if all were right in the world. Suddenly, she hears Tokio confront a stranger in their living room downstairs.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he asks.
“Just wanted to have a look around,” the hakujin announces. “Thought I’d see what you Japs are leaving behind.”
“Get out!” Tokio yells, advancing toward the man.
Sneering as he turns to go, he says: “I’ll be back after you’re gone.”
Sumiko puts Virginia to bed and flies downstairs. She finds Tokio on the front porch shaking with rage.
“What was that all about?”
“Some jerk sauntered in as if he owned the place,” Tokio replies, punching his right fist into his left palm. “He called me a Jap in my own living room.”
Sumiko looks down the street, but sees no one. The curfew is approaching, soon to throw the neighbourhood indoors. She hates the raw, eerie quiet that follows.
“Come inside, Toki,” she mumbles, taking his elbow. “I’ll make tea.”
Shige rises at dawn the next morning. He splashes cold water on his face and dresses, his mind already racing. The morning passes in a blur, like a disjointed dream in which nothing gets resolved. All he remembers later is the heap of luggage gleaming against the royal blue water like an ungainly pack of sea lions basking in the sun.
In keeping with his messenger role, Shige is also responsible for ensuring that everyone get on board. He appoints Kaname Izumi and Mitsuyuki Sakata to help him check off the 470 names as people board the ship. The RCMP stand by like sentinels, on alert for would-be escapees as men, women, and children file up the gangplank onto the floating hulk of the SS Princess Adelaide.
Shige’s fifty-nine-year-old mother holds hands with her two granddaughters, while Sumiko carries five-week-old Virginia onto the ship. Tomoki Kawabe picked Virginia’s Japanese name, Yukuko, meaning “to go” in Japanese. The last baby of Japanese ancestry born in Chemainus, she will be five when her family settles into a home of their own again, some 3,000 miles to the east.
Within a week of their departure, the Yoshidas splinter as the mass dispersal of Japanese Canadians begins. Tokio is the first to leave, signing up the moment he hears the call for road crew volunteers in Jackfish, Ontario. Kumeo is next to flee the stench of Hastings Park, heading for a large dairy farm near St. Thomas, Ontario in early May.
With her husband, youngest son, and eldest daughter in Japan, Kume watches Tokio and Kumeo run almost as far away in the opposite direction. But unlike those in Japan, Tokio and Kumeo can write to her. Ever watchful for subversive activity, Canadian authorities censor their letters—a measure that, like all that is happening, falls outside Kume’s comprehension.
The women and children pass the summer idly in a Hastings Park dormitory, while Shige takes charge of the boys’ dormitory and runs it like a military barracks. With no household chores, Kume and Sumiko join others on the grounds outside and chat or wander aimlessly about. No one stays inside any more than they have to. Had they a choice, they would avoid the cafeteria-style slop with equal fervour. Spared the indignity, Virginia nurses through the summer months. In the dead of night, Sumiko contributes to the muffled shuffling of mothers responding to cries of hunger in the massive hollow space.
In September they leave for Tashme, the largest of the internment camps. Shige chooses it because it is close to Vancouver, and therefore to home, but Sumiko learns later that her parents are hundreds of miles away in the Slocan Valley. Al-though anything is an improvement on Hastings Park, Tashme is cut off from the cluster of camps in the Slocan.
As the war progresses, so does the dispersal. Ida leaves Tashme to join Chizuko in sugar beet fields near Lethbridge, Alberta. They pass the duration of the war hoeing rows of sugar beets stretching out of sight. In return for their back-breaking labour, they live in hovels.
Meanwhile, the Yoshidas share a shack with Sumiko’s sister and family. Impossibly crowded, the Otas get another shack in due course. Even with them gone, the space is as inadequate as the insulation from winter. But none of it dampens Shige’s enthusiasm for creating opportunity. Hired as assistant welfare manager for the B.C. Security Commission, he assists people in need and mediates disputes while the hakujin manager does the paper work. Then by coal oil lamplight at night, he leans over his kitchen table and plans his next boy scout troop.
In February 1943, Shige hoists a Union Jack in camp and forms the ist Tashme troop. A year later the troop celebrates its first anniversary with a torch parade under a star-studded sky. Sumiko bundles up the girls and joins the crowd lining the main boulevard as Shige and his assistants march no boys along the streets. Holding their torches high, the scouts wind through deep snow banks, their faces aglow in the bitter cold.
When it celebrates its second anniversary in February 1945, the troop is the largest in the British Commonwealth. All 200 boys are interned Canadians of Japanese descent, swearing their allegiance to the Union Jack.
Thousands of miles away, one of Shige’s Chemainus scouts volunteers to prove his allegiance overseas. On February 12, 1945, Kumeo Yoshida joins eleven Canadian Japanese privates enlisting in the army as Japanese linguists in Southeast Asia—not so far from his young brother’s treacherous exploits in the Japanese navy. But the war is almost over when Kumeo finishes training with the Gurkha regiment in Poona and Calcutta. As a translator for prisoners of war after Japan surrenders, Kumeo finally realizes his goal. Although not in combat, he proves his loyalty to Canada, an ethic instilled in him at an early age by his big brother, the scoutmaster.
The 1st Tashme troop holds a farewell party for Shige in May 1945. Giving his goodbye speech in the camp hall, “Dynamite Yoshida” can’t contain his tears. Facing the unknown once again, Shige not only has to let go of his attachment to the boys but to scouting itself. In his efforts to re-establish a home base for his family, Shige will never find time to lead a scout troop again.
Sumiko is bracing herself for his departure. She still hasn’t shaken the image of her sister and family disappearing down the road for Japan. Knowing she will not see them again, she fears the worst. Like thousands, they succumbed to government pressure to “repatriate.” Some agreed to go because they were bitter; many were too old and afraid to start all over in eastern Canada; few expected widespread disease and famine to greet them.
Two weeks after Sumiko watched the Otas go, Shige climbs into the same truck caravan and rumbles out of sight in a cloud of dust. She has no way of knowing when or where she will see him again. During the two years it takes Shige to establish a firm home base in Toronto, the war ends and the government begins closing down the camps. Now head of her family, Sumiko is the sole decision-maker for the first time in her life. Shuffled from Tashme to Kaslo first, the Yoshidas join Sumiko’s parents. After some months, they are sent to the tiny nearby settlement of Rose-berry and finally to the military base in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. During the winter of 1946, Sumiko’s father loses his will to live and withers away in the Moose Jaw military hospital.
In June 1947, Sumiko arrives at Union Station in Toronto with her three daughters and two mothers, as elated as they are black with soot. She can still feel the hot expanse of prairie trailing them as the promise of a real home looms around the bend. Impulsively, Sumiko flings her ID card onto the tracks and takes her husband’s arm. They disappear inside the station, their family in tow.
Eventually, all the Yoshidas but one are reunited in Ontario. Chizuko remains in Alberta, raising her family of eleven. Shige buys a hardware store in downtown Toronto and prospers. His father returns from Japan a few years before he dies in 1952 at the age of seventy-two. Kume is almost ninety-three when she dies twenty-four years later.
A young woman again in her mind, she is climbing the mountain above Mitomimura to collect firewood.