SHUNICHI ISOKI RISES AT DAWN and slips downstairs without disturbing his wife. An early riser since his youth, he enjoys the solitude and soft light, often using the time to brush up on his Japanese. But this morning he limbers up his hands briefly before opening his writing pad. His arthritis is a bit trouble-some, but he still takes pride in his clear, uniform handwriting. He scratches his temple with the end of the pen and begins the letter to his sister and her husband.
Dear Yoshiko and Takayoshi,
Hana and I got back from the coast yesterday. Chemainus has changed so much I hardly recognized it. We strolled through the old neighbourhood and found the house our family lived in on Esplanade. It is one of very few homes that remains in what used to be Kawahara camp. The old community hall is still there too, but it is a private home now. It looks so small compared to what I remember. Walking those streets after almost fifty years felt strange, but everyone we met was friendly.
There are some wrinkles in the plans for the scout mural, but arrangements are proceeding. After a lot of discussion, we decided on a picture of the troop and scoutmaster—only to find out it has been lost somehow. Our second choice is the picture of the troop and issei executive in front of the community hall in June 1930, but that isn’t finalized yet.
Things went more smoothly regarding plans for the cemetery monument. Reverend Costerton showed us where the land toward the back of the cemetery dips into a shallow hollow. It seems likely that is where our community’s graves were, so we’ll put the memorial in that general area. The headstones that the volunteer worker found will flank both sides of a large marble plaque. The names of the deceased, including our baby brother, will be engraved on two additional marble plaques.
I feel strongly that we should all be there to witness the dedication of the memorial monument. Hana and I are driving across and would life you to join us. We hope you will consider it.
Please write soon.
Shunichi sets the pen down and stares at the Toronto suburb outside his living room. Highrises across the street are partially obscured by the Japanese plum tree in his yard. The morning sun is filling the corners of his lovely home, drawing his attention back indoors. The brass clock chimes are about to strike seven. Hana will be up soon.
The steady ticking of the clock has a calming influence not unlike the calm he once felt at sea aboard his fish boat. He closes his eyes and imagines waves lapping softly against the side of Joker. Suddenly, Shunichi is overwhelmed by a longing to drop anchor in a quiet cove, where cooling summer breezes carry the tang of salt air. The unreachable notion of solitude at sea has crept into his living room, lingering in the golden light.
Shunichi is Shyobu and Jiroichi Isoki’s middle son, the firstborn in Canada and the only surviving son. His older brother, Ichio, died when he was a child in the whaling village in Wakayama where he was born. Some years after Shunichi was born in Chemainus in 1915, his nine-month-old brother died in his birthplace too.
His sister Yoshiko is his only Canadian sibling still living in Canada. Both of his other Canadian-born sisters emigrated to Japan before the war. Of his three sisters born in Japan, only one is still alive.
With his wife’s help, Shunichi keeps his complicated family history up to date in a senzo dai dai. Crafted from a type of Japanese cedar called sugi, the antique polished box contains drawers with tiny memorial tablets that document generations of ancestors. To understand the complexity of his generation requires insight into the pressures his parents faced. To flee poverty was one thing; to leave one’s offspring behind was another. But like many issei, his parents intended on uniting the children of two worlds in Japan. The fact that the senzo dai dai is in Shunichi’s care in Canada is striking evidence that circumstance dictated otherwise.
Jiroichi Isoki and his brother Tanezo are youngsters when the worst whaling disaster in their village’s 700-year whaling his-tory occurs. On the shores of the Wakayama village of Taiji in 1878, one of the hereditary leaders gives the order to harpoon a female right whale with a calf. Although he knows it defies a strict code of conduct in the ritualized hunt, Taiji Kakuemon argues with his counterpart that the poverty-stricken village needs a whale. At the sound of conch shells blowing from beach lookouts, the whalers pump their sculling oars toward the mother whale. A net is thrown and she is harpooned. It is late and growing dark when the dying whale drags the whalers into a stormy sea. A few days later, Taiji counts its dead at about 120. With most of its fleet destroyed and the best whalers gone, the town slumps into a depression and the ancient tradition of small net whaling fleets seems doomed.
Around the turn of the century, Jiroichi and Tanezo join those trying to sustain that way of life. But by 1910, whaling for humpback, grey, bryde, sperm and right whales enters a new technological phase, complete with large modern vessels and fire-powered harpoons. Unable to compete, Jiroichi and Tanezo abandon their whaling fleet and join the emigration wave across the Pacific, hoping to make a fortune and return.
After settling in Chemainus, the brothers buy a fish boat and begin charting the best spots for cod. The harvest is abundant, but the price for their catch is poor. Forced to accept that earning a fortune is not going to be a short-lived goal, Jiroichi sends for his wife. Shyobu leaves her daughters and joins him in 1914. A year later, Shunichi is born in their humble home across from the Chemainus lumber yard.
Shunichi’s first memory is of sea. Bursts of sunlight hopscotch across the water and bounce off the sheer cliff that towers above him. He is fishing for “shiners” that flash through the translucent jade current. It is the summer the Isokis are living aboard Joker, fishing the reefs around Crofton and Maple Bay. Wrapped in a blanket and propped up on deck, Shunichi views the world with the unbridled clarity of a four-year-old.
In contrast to the scenic life at sea, most of his early years are spent in one of the shacks along Oak Street that his family rents from Giichi Nakashima. There is nothing notable about their home, but Shunichi loves the trek up to Nakashima’s “ranch” past the railway station. The main attraction is an old horse that Giichi hitches to a sleigh when it snows. Even though icy gusts numb his cheeks, Shunichi laughs as the horse trots over the rolling hills. In the summertime, the aroma of ripening apples and peaches lingers on the property into dusk.
The neighbourhood does not change much when Gihei Kawahara becomes their landlord after the sawmill burns down in 1923, although a few tense months pass before the mill owners announce they will rebuild. Mr. Nakashima’s chrysanthemum garden is an unfortunate casualty when Gihei builds a bunkhouse to accommodate the influx of working bachelors, but little else changes.
The day the Kawaharas move in, Shunichi notices a heavyset boy his age shuffling aimlessly about. He walks up and introduces himself.
“My name’s Takayoshi,” the boy replies.
“Is that your father over there?” Shunichi asks.
Takayoshi glances across his shoulder. “Yes, that’s Papa.”
“I guess he’s our new landlord, then.”
Takayoshi nods. “What’s there to do around here?”
“Let me see,” Shunichi says. “Want to play cowboys and Indians?”
Takayoshi’s eyes widen. “Sure!”
“C’mon, follow me.”
Shunichi shows him how to make a sling-shot type of rubber gun with wood and old tire tubing, and they head for the rock bluffs behind the neighbourhood. As the weeks go by, Takayoshi learns all kinds of new tricks. The boys attach wire hoops to discarded iron wheels and roll them along the dirt street, hooting and hollering as they race their pretend cars and motorcycles recklessly through Kawahara camp. They fish for rock cod off the government wharf and sell their catch to their Chinese neighbours: the Chang brothers, Tong Puck and Hong Hing. With ten cents tucked neatly in their pockets, they scurry up to the community hall by the railway station to watch silent movies of cowboys and Indians on Saturday afternoons.
As Shunichi and Takayoshi grow strong, Hong Hing hires them to lug firewood off the beach. One wet Saturday morning in March, the boys heave water-logged driftwood up the steep, short hill to Hong Hing’s house.
“God, this is heavy,” Takayoshi grunts, trying to shift the weight onto his hip.
“Yeah. He better pay us that twenty-five cents he promised.”
“He will. Look at him down there, watching us sweat,” Takayoshi remarks as he drops the wood by Hong Hing’s chopping block.
“He’s a good foreman, eh?” Shunichi replies, giggling. “Hey, did you know his real name is Fong Yen Lew. He’s from Canton. That’s what his brother told me.”
“How does he get Hong Hing from that?”
“Who knows. Race you back to the beach. He won’t pay us until we’ve hauled at least three more loads.”
When they are done, the old man invites them inside for a meal. Takayoshi’s eyes light up when he sees Chinese cookies, some made from peanuts, others filled with a sweet white paste, but it’s Shunichi who discovers the pork buns: mouth-watering and rich after a morning’s wet work.
At school, the boys mingle and play team sports. In the spring, between rugby and baseball, they swing lumpy bags of marbles to and from school.
“You going to play that Danish boy at recess?” Takayoshi asks.
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Well, I heard him bragging yesterday about how he can beat anybody. You ought to beat him for a change. You’re good enough.”
“Aw, c’mon. I’ve played him lots before. He beats me every time,” Shunichi says, kicking a stone at his feet.
“I bet you can beat him,” Takayoshi replies, turning onto the schoolyard.
Sure enough, during recess Shunichi is in the ring at the centre of the largest crowd. He plays several rounds with the Danish boy and knocks every one of his rival’s marbles outside the ring.
When recess is over, Takayoshi clears a path to his friend. “Knew you could do it,” he shouts, slapping Shunichi on the back and grinning.
Shunichi beams and marches back to class, swollen with victory. The second the lunch bell rings, he is out the door. Takayoshi scuffles past some classmates, knowing his chances of beating Shunichi to the comics today are nil. He glimpses his friend up ahead, splashing through a swamp, cutting across backyards and soaring down the alley to Esplanade. Takayoshi is almost a breathless block away when Shunichi crashes through the pool room door and grabs the Vancouver Sun comic strip that a Japanese bachelor leaves for them. Takayoshi is puffing so hard when he arrives that Shunichi bursts out laughing.
“You rat,” Takayoshi says, hobbling toward him.
“Slow poke,” Shunichi teases. “Hey, did you see me beat him, Tak?”
Takayoshi grins and tumbles to the floor where they read the comics together.
As patrol leaders in the 2nd Chemainus boy scout troop, Takayoshi and Shunichi spend countless Saturdays practicing Morse code. They run copper wires under the roof connecting Shunichi’s home to Takayoshi’s bedroom above the store. With wires attached to flashlight batteries and bulbs on boards at each end, they press out one word at a time. Then to make sure the communique is getting through, they employ their sisters to verify each word. Taking their part as seriously as the boys, the girls sprint up and down the boardwalk piecing each critical message together.
Pretend emergencies aside, the boys take the ethics of scouting to heart. Almost a year after the troop forms in 1930, sixteen-year-old Shunichi tests his bravery. Swimming with friends off the government wharf one afternoon in May, he notices ten-year-old Yoshi Higashi flailing in deep water.
“Hold on, Yoshi,” he yells. “I’ll save you.”
Shunichi swims as hard as he can to reach the boy. Between gulps of saltwater, Yoshi manages to spit out the word “cramps.”
“It’s okay. I’m here now,” Shunichi says, propping the boy under his arm as he treads water. Then, struggling toward rocky shallows, he discovers the rescue is not so simple. Waves wash over their heads as he fights against the undertow. When he finally makes it to shore, Shunichi is shaking and vows to learn better rescuing techniques. By the time a national scouting executive awards him a medal of merit at the community hall months later, he has.
Before joining the scout troop, Shunichi spent most of his spare time helping his father. Sometimes they’d go fishing or to Southey Point, where there is a long shoal of shells. After shovelling broken clam and oyster shells into sacks, they hauled them back to Joker in a rowboat. In town, a Chinese chicken farmer gave them pennies for their labour.
It was hard work for young Shunichi, but he enjoyed exploring the waters with his father. Sometimes when they were motoring along, he thought about what he’d like to do when he finished school. A bright student, he had been promoted two grades. As he neared the end of grade eight, the principal urged him to go to high school. But Shunichi knew his care-free days were numbered. His parents simply couldn’t afford to send him to high school when he could be earning a living. A few months after his fourteenth birthday in May 1929, Shunichi begins fishing full-time with his father.
He doesn’t care much for fishing at first, especially when it means missing the baseball season. But he is attentive and learns where to go for the best catches of ling cod during his first summer out. They often motor to Active Pass to catch herring for bait before seeking out the rocky shoals where cod swim.
Shunichi learns an important lesson on one of their trips to Active Pass. Waiting to fish for herring at flood tide, Jiroichi and Shunichi tie Joker to several kelp-heads near Helen Point on Mayne Island.
“Let’s have lunch while we wait for the tide, Papa.” Jiroichi nods.
Shunichi goes below for last night’s leftover rice and matsue take mushrooms. Sitting against the gunwales with the sun on their faces, they eat their lunch. A short while later, Shunichi leans over the gunwale and studies the water.
“I think we’ve drifted onto a reef.”
Jiroichi checks over the stern and throws up his hands. Joker is stuck. “It’s too late now. We’ll have to wait for the tide,” he says, frowning.
Shunichi eyes the channel. “Sure hope one of the Princess ferries isn’t steaming this way right now.”
Jiroichi checks both ends of the pass. They are thinking the same thing: a swell from one of those ships would probably knock them over.
Fortunately, the tide changes within the hour. They are motoring toward the raging whirlpools of Georgeson Bay to fish for bait long before a ferry cruises through the pass.
Except when the fishing season closes in January and February, Shunichi rises with his parents at dawn, eats breakfast, and sets out with the tide, weather permitting. After getting their bait, father and son might fish for a week before going home. They are lonely stretches for young Shunichi, who longs for friends his age while sharing meals at anchor with other issei fishermen.
During the fall herring runs, Jiroichi takes Shunichi south to Pender Island where a friend from Wakayama runs a her-ring saltery at Beddis Rock. They stand at the conveyor belt that rolls the catch up to huge vats, picking out the larger herring to sell as kippers. It is tedious, smelly work, but they make a reasonable profit in the short-lived season.
En route, they pass seine boats setting their nets in vast schools of herring. Fascinated, Shunichi watches a two-man crew row out to the twisting, flashing silver mass. Without winches, the men haul a 400-ton catch into their scow for hours on end while bald eagles circle above. Shunichi stops associating life at sea with monotony.
As time goes by, he also begins to enjoy their quiet summer evenings at anchor. Schools of minnows ripple across the glassy harbour, while salmon splash through the surface. A flaming orange sun sinks below a shimmering ridge of cedar. Orcas sound down the channel, fine spray spewing out their blowholes, their dorsal fins cutting across the horizon like samurai spears.
Shunichi prays for such a night the first time he sleeps alone on the boat, anchored in a small bay off Tent Island in Stuart Channel. He has learned all he is going to learn about fishing from Jiroichi, who was targetted when the government tightened restrictions on Japanese fishermen. A few short months after saving Yoshi from drowning, sixteen-year-old Shunichi is on his own at sea. Now fifty-six, Jiroichi finds menial work at the mill, cutting firewood out of scrap lumber.
Shunichi fishes the waters around Chemainus his first day out alone, trying his luck off the reefs in Stuart Channel. He still uses the names men like his father gave to various islands and reefs, but he knows the English names from his marine chart. Among the issei, Tent Island is known as Hyotanshima for its gourd-like shape. Because of its length, Willy Island is called Nagashima, meaning “long island.” Likewise, the Catholic school on Kuper Island led them to name a nearby reef Gakkonomae, meaning “in front of the school.”
Shunichi revisits these fishing spots in his mind while his moderate catch lolls about in the watertight bulkhead. Aware the fish buyer will be at Porlier Pass tomorrow, he decides not to go home. He wants to increase his catch by getting an early start in the morning.
He motors into a small bay off Tent Island and sets the anchor. After putting a pot of rice on his cookstove in the galley, Shunichi sits in the cockpit and plans the day ahead. He decides to fish nearby, then round the south end of Kuper Island and head north along Trincomali Channel to the tip of Galiano. By the time the rice is cooked, the ocean and sky are indigo. Chemainus twinkles in the distance. Shunichi goes below, lights a coal oil lamp and eats his supper.
He sprinkles dry seaweed over his steaming bowl and thinks of the Sunday excursion last winter when he and his family scraped sandy seaweed off the rocks on Galiano. He wonders what they are eating tonight. Perhaps they have some dried mushrooms and pickles to go with their rice and fish.
Shunichi cleans up his dishes and goes to bed. Though tired, he can’t sleep. Wishing the gentle lapping of waves against the wooden hull would lull him to sleep, he tosses and turns, fighting a mounting sense of fear. Alone and vulnerable, he imagines Indians on the rampage. They are not the jovial Native longshoremen at the Chemainus dock, or the sad children at the residential school perched on a hill to the north of his anchorage. They are warriors from the silent movies of his youth, brandishing tomahawks and screaming blood-curdling war cries as they lunge at him from the bow of their great voyager canoe.
It is a long night. Shunichi is relieved when dawn finally creeps into his cabin. Once up and going, he laughs at himself. The sun warms his back as he steers Joiner out of the bay. He is never afraid on his boat again.
By noon, another fifty pounds of ling cod are floating in Shunichi’s holding tank. He puts his East Hope engine in gear and points Joker north into Trincomali Channel. Musing about his wretched night, he smiles when the lighthouse at Porlier Pass comes into view.
The fish buyers from Vancouver are busy. Shunichi manouevres his boat among the others and begins dressing the cod while he waits. It being summer, he stands to gain about eight cents a pound for his catch. The price drops to less than two cents a pound in the spring, when the market is glutted before salmon season opens up.
Of the many buyers at the pass, Shunichi usually sells his catch to Chomatsu Koyanagi. Initially, he brought bread to sell to the fishermen, but then he started giving it away in order to keep his clients. Shunichi sees an opening and pulls up alongside Chomatsu’s boat.
“Greetings, Koyanagi-san. Got room for more fish?” Shunichi asks, grinning.
“For your catch, always. What have you got?”
Shunichi hauls the cod from his tank and heaves it onto the deck.
“It’s a fair catch,” Chomatsu says, rolling a toothpick between his teeth and squinting into the sun. He lifts the cod onto his scales and hands Shunichi a duplicate bill, crediting him seventy-five pounds. Chomatsu will calculate the value and pay Shunichi on his next trip, minus whatever dry goods he might order.
“So long,” Shunichi says, waving as he pulls away. He heads towards Mrs. Gear’s marine gas station in Lighthouse Bay. A kind Welsh woman with a son about Shunichi’s age, she lost her husband during the First World War. Now she smiles and embraces everyone as if they are kin and earns the title “Mama” from all the Japanese fishermen.
Shunichi anchors Joker in the harbour, rows to shore and scrambles up the bluff to the large, neat cottage. Although plenty of fishermen rely on the gas station for fuel, most are issei who speak little English. Isolated from community life, the Gears are especially delighted whenever Shunichi arrives at their door.
Humming under her breath, Mrs. Gear ties her apron around her ample girth and cooks up her guest’s favourite meal: a chunky pot of clam chowder. After dinner, they catch up on island news and play rummy at the kitchen table. A large woodstove crackling at their backs, Teddy Gear and Shunichi talk about their dreams and ambitions. Some hours pass, and Mrs. Gear serves up large pieces of rich chocolate cake. After saying good night, Shunichi rows back to Joker under a star-studded sky. His oars stir the phosphorescence in gleaming black waters as he slides toward the shadow of his boat.
Tonight, he sleeps like a baby.
Leaving adolescence behind, Shunichi grows into a handsome young man and a proficient fisherman. His range extends north of Chemainus from Ruxton Island south to Osborn Bay off Crofton, along reefs in Stuart and Trincomali Channels. The shape of the ocean floor becomes part of his inner landscape as he works the rocky reefs with his line.
It is not a particularly lucrative business, but the family manages as well as any. Bartering fish for vegetables and fruit provides a more balanced diet, a common practice that extends beyond the Japanese community. In the waters around Yellow Point, farmers row out to meet fishermen who come close to shore, where they exchange fish for fruit at sea.
But Mr. Iwasaki’s strawberry farm north of Vesuvius on Saltspring Island is Shunichi’s favourite bartering stop. His farm spreads over a particularly sunny stretch of waterfront, where his strawberries ripen early in the season. Whenever Shunichi thinks of summer, he envisions Mr. Iwasaki’s strawberries and unsullied afternoons aboard Joker. Cupping a bowl in his hands as he idles along the channel, he sucks the sweet red juice from the plump fruit as warm breezes rush past.
Home from fishing before Christmas in 1934, nineteen-year-old Shunichi steps outside one afternoon. Strolling up Esplanade and rounding the corner, he listens to the unusual quiet, as if a vacuum has sucked life out of the street. He glances to the west and notices dark clouds cresting over Mount Brenton. Suddenly, the wind descends, roaring down from the mountains like a tornado.
Stepping back into a doorway for shelter, Shunichi watches the storm wreak havoc around him. Wood from the lumber yard is flying in all directions, as is anything lying about. The roof of the thousand-foot storage and loading shed lifts with a crack and slams onto the bank. The storefront window at Taniwas’ smashes and shards of glass join the flying debris. Shunichi peers out to sea, hoping Joker is safely moored. Several ocean freighters anchored in the harbour start their engines and head into the wind to avoid being blown onto nearby reefs.
Praying that Joker is secure, Shunichi pulls his cap down with a tug and turns to go home. He takes one step and almost bumps into Takayoshi.
“God almighty, this is some storm,” Takayoshi yells.
“What on earth are you doing?” Shunichi asks, eyeing the garbage can lid in his friend’s hand.
“I’m using this as a shield while I work my way through camp. I’ve got to warn people to douse the fire in their stoves, or we’ll have a worse disaster on our hands.”
Takayoshi carries on before he can respond. Shunichi de-bates whether to go after him and offer to help, but decides he’d better go home and check his own stove. His parents and Yoshiko are huddling near the front window when he dashes inside.
“Shunichi, where were you? What is happening out there?” Yoshiko asks.
“Tornado, maybe a hurricane, I don’t know. Look, we’ve got to put the fire out in the stove now”
Yoshiko stares at her brother as he runs to the kitchen and grabs a bucket of water. When the smoke clears, Shunichi listens to the stovepipe rattling and sighs with relief.
The next morning the community assesses the damage. Everyone is out sweeping up debris or repairing windows, twisted frames and roofs. Miraculously, no one is hurt.
The following year, the Isokis move to Sidney so Shunichi can try out new fishing grounds around southern Vancouver Is-land. Initially, Shige Yoshida comes along as his partner, hustling Shunichi’s catch wherever he can find a buyer. But there is less business than they hoped, so Shige returns to Chemainus leaving Shunichi to sell his own catch.
He works hard over the next three years, fishing and building up a modest clientele. But in 1938, customers start turning away. Press coverage of Japan’s military prowess in Asia is fueling long-simmering tensions. On his rounds one Saturday morning, Shunichi meets racism face-to-face.
A regular customer opens the door and shakes her head. “I have nothing against you personally,” she begins. “It’s just that I have to keep peace with my neighbours, and they don’t like me buying fish from Japanese. I’m sorry.”
Shunichi stands on the porch and stares blankly at the closed door.
At home that evening, he is depressed, not sure how to break the news. “Mama,” he begins.
Shyobu looks up from her knitting. “Yes?”
“I’m not sure if. . . . Oh, never mind.” He wants to shelter her from the guilt, the shame.
Shyobu puts down the socks. “It’s time to return to Chemainus, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I can’t sell my fish here anymore. From Chemainus, I can always go to the buyers at Porlier Pass.”
“Well, we must move back anyways. We have to prepare for your sister’s wedding.”
“Yoshiko is getting married? When? To who?”
“Next February. To Takayoshi.”
With Yoshiko secure in marriage and Shunichi a grown man, Jiroichi and Shyobu book their passage to Japan in 1939. Among other considerations, they want to see their daughters in Wakayama, although one died in childbirth years ago. Their youngest is getting married, so weddings mark their departure from Canada and return to Japan like bookends. Now in their sixties, they opt to live out their days in their homeland. Caught between cultures, they say farewell to Shunichi and Yoshiko with the same stoic face that marked their days as immigrants.
With his parents gone and his only remaining sister living at the Kawaharas’, Shunichi rents a room and spends more time aboard Joker. He has always looked forward to the cruise up Stuart Channel, where the Bare Point lighthouse comes into view. From the days when he fished with his father until recently, the red-and-white tower signals his homecoming—a time for shared family meals and a fun Japanese card game called Gaji after dinner. Outings to pick mushrooms in the forest or jaunts to Galiano to gather seaweed have come to an end. Although his sister and friends are in Chemainus, Shunichi feels more lonely in town than at sea. Fishermen friends anchor regularly alongside at night. Kanichi Nakatsu and Genichi Nakahara, also from Chemainus, often share supper with Shunichi in bays sheltered from gusting winds.
A little over a year after his parents leave, a new market opens up. Dudley Cole, a Victoria man working for an American firm, is buying dog fish livers, which are boiled down for oil used by arms’ manufacturers. Early in 1941, Shunichi hires Minoru Nagasawa as his deckhand. They rig Joker for gillnetting dog fish, fishing that year from Seymour Narrows near Campbell River to the Race Rocks lighthouse in Juan de Fuca Strait south of Victoria. Genichi and Kanichi do the same, the two Chemainus boats often trailing each other and tying up together at night.
Although more lucrative, the work is harder than fishing for ling cod. Rather than bringing in his catch with one single line, Shunichi has to set and haul nets by hand. And because clubbing a dogfish to death is virtually impossible, Shunichi plugs the holes in his bulkhead and throws the fish in there to die. Minoru’s help and companionship is one big consolation, particularly during the long rainy winter months.
One miserable afternoon, Shunichi decides to call it a day. A storm is brewing, the grey ocean swells rising and the wind picking up in the strait off Qualicum Beach. He calls to Minoru to haul in the nets so they can head for shelter. Minoru looks skyward and nods. After clearing the nets, Shunichi putters toward a harbour. Halfway there, he comes up along-side a small power boat in trouble.
A woman is rocking a little girl in her arms. The child wails into the gusting wind, her weary mother distraught. Their engine has stalled, and the ashen-faced father is trying to keep the boat from drifting further into the Strait of Georgia. With only a small anchor and a length of rode that falls short of the sandy bottom some twenty fathoms below, he hasn’t a hope.
Shunichi and Minoru eye each other anxiously. “Where are you going?” Minoru asks.
“Powell River,” the man replies. “We have no supplies on board to ride out the storm.”
Shunichi surveys the chop, figuring they can make it across before the full force of the gale hits. Throwing out a tow line, he goes below and puts his eight-horsepower one-cylinder East Hope engine in gear. Shunichi tightens his Cowichan sweater around his neck and begins the long, rough tow across Strait of Georgia. About halfway, waves crash against the southern shores of Lasqueti and Texada Islands on their port side. Bucking through the chop, Shunichi and Minoru pray for the tow line to hold.
Just before dark, Joker chugs into Powell River harbour. Minoru is securing the boats to the dock when the family scrambles ashore and disappears. Feeling quite ravenous, Shunichi begins preparing a simple supper.
The rice is still cooking when the man reappears with a half pound of bacon. “I can’t give you much, so take this,” he says.
“You don’t have to give me this, you know,” Shunichi re-plies. But he has already gone. Back in the galley, Shunichi waves the bacon in front of Minoru. “I would have preferred a handshake and a thank you. But I guess thanking a Japanese is beneath him.”
Lying in his bunk later, Shunichi closes his eyes and lis-tens to the wind. The little girl’s face looms before him, and he sighs. Resentment towards her father subsides as he pictures the child tucked in her bed, safe from the storm. He pulls the covers up to his neck and slides into a deep, dreamless sleep.
As it turns out, the year of dog fishing is his last. Moored at the docks in Sidney harbour on the morning of December 7, 1941, Shunichi, Minoru, Genichi and Kanichi are awakened by a friend warning them to leave quickly. News of Pearl Harbor is spreading fast, and nearby James Island has a stockpile of dynamite. People might think them capable of sabotage and send a posse out after them.
It is like waking up to a nightmare that will last for years.
Shunichi and his fishermen friends motor up to Chemainus that morning. The next day, a Scottish fish inspector orders them to deliver their boats to Nanaimo. Shunichi, Kanichi, and Jinpachi Yamashita, an issei fisherman, solemnly slip away from the docks one by one. Out in the channel, the sea is choppy but not dangerously rough. It is a typical early December day, overcast, damp and cold.
Fighting excessive currents as he passes through Dodd Narrows, Shunichi remembers one of his Japanese language school teachers. He can still hear Mrs. Yonemura telling the class, “You must become good Canadians. Go ahead and mix with the white children and join the boy scout troop.” Both she and Mr. Yonemura, a UBC graduate who worked on the boom in Okada camp, were more modern in their thinking than most of their peers. But her message, which once seemed all important, now rings hollow.
The next morning the men join a fleet of boats heading for the mouth of the Fraser River. Shunichi crosses the Strait of Georgia among the others without incident, but the trip is a blur. Later, he vaguely recalls tying Jo^er to the Fraser River dock—his last glimpse of her bobbing alongside Kanichi’s boat, stranded in a sea of vessels.
Before going home, Shunichi and Kanichi travel to the im-migration building, hoping to see Otoji Okinobu. Perhaps he will explain why the RCMP picked him up the day after Pearl Harbor. But guards prevent them from getting any closer than the parking lot outside the building. Someone inside sees them and brings Otoji to a window. Shunichi and Kanichi wave and he waves back. They never see or hear of him again.
With nothing more to do, Shunichi and Kanichi catch the next ship back to Nanaimo and ride a bus to Chemainus in silence.
Meanwhile, Dudley Cole is busy making phone calls from Victoria. Rather than lose one of his most hardworking and trusted fishermen, Dudley pleads with various authorities to allow Shunichi to continue fishing for him. He suggests a sailor equipped with a radio phone could go aboard Joker as added security. When his efforts fail, Dudley contacts Shunichi and offers to sell his thirty-two-foot fish boat. A few weeks later, Shunichi gets a cheque for $600—much less than the boat that he rebuilt in 1938 is worth, but much more than he would get from the government. Worse still, she might just sink into the muddy sludge in the river delta. Such is the fate of Jinpachi’s boat, squeezed between bigger boats that crush her hull.
Back in Chemainus, Shunichi makes plans to visit his fiancee in Cumberland. The day before Christmas, he boards a bus and travels north to the small mining settlement on the eastern edge of the Comox Valley, where Hanaye Nakauchi lives with her family.
Gihei Kawahara and a friend of Hana’s father arranged the engagement earlier that fall. The young couple hope to marry next year, but they have not yet set a date. Rumours of evacuation now threaten to thwart their plans altogether.
Shunichi’s chest feels tight as he rides the bus and mulls over recent events. He cannot shake the image of Mr. Okinobu waving, tiny, from his window. He closes his eyes and listens to the bus engine rumble as they twist their way up island. He searches for Joker in his mind, but hordes offish boats obscure her from view. She merges with the large menacing mass of the unknown.
When Shunichi reaches the Japanese section in Cumber-land, the Nakauchis give him a warm welcome and the dismal cloud fades. He settles comfortably into their home, enjoying the closeness of a family at Christmas. It is not a big celebration, but it is meaningful. Hana and he know full well it might be their first and last together on home turf, but her parents inspire a certain courage. Clearly prepared to face any difficulty, they rely on their pioneering spirit to see them through. Concern clouds their eyes, but not despair.
The tight-knit Cumberland Japanese community adheres to the old ways. Their language school is arguably the best on the coast. Hana is well educated for her generation—a grade twelve graduate and perfectly bilingual. She has also been taught morals at the Japanese language school. The textbook for the shushin class reinforces lessons that began at home: perseverance, obedience, honesty, hard work, patience, kindness to animals, and respect for elders. Of all these qualities, extraordinary perseverance will sustain her through extraordi-nary times.
Without his boat, Shunichi spends his last days in Kawahara camp, bracing himself for the next government order and wondering what will become of them all. The Kawaharas give him room and board in exchange for work around the neighbourhood. When rumours about the evacuation turn to hard fact, Shunichi helps board up windows and move storage crates into the community hall. Yoshiko is nearing the end of her third pregnancy, so the family goes to Vancouver when Gihei departs for road camp, leaving Shunichi to look after the property and prepare to close everything down.
Emptiness echoes in the house. Mrs. Kawahara and her sister-in-law continue cooking for the bachelors, but Shunichi bumps into a shadowy presence as he walks the halls. In that respect, the evacuation doesn’t come too soon.
The lighthouse on Bare Point, which once signalled his home-coming, disappears as the SS Princess Adelaide rounds Tent Island and steams up Trincomali Channel. Standing on the ship’s deck, Shunichi wonders when that welcoming beacon will come into view again. It recedes behind the forests on Kuper Island as the past slips from his grip with the force of an ebb tide at full moon.
As the steamship cruises toward Porlier Pass, he relives his years as a fisherman, pointing out the spots where he fished and anchored to friends on deck. Chugging through the pass, he closes his eyes and inhales deeply: the scent of Mrs. Gear’s clam chowder lingers. All of it sails behind him as the ship steams into the open waters of the Strait of Georgia, where snow-capped cobalt mountains on the mainland stretch in the distance. The spring sun is warm and the breezes, light. He is travelling toward Joker at the Fraser River dock, the whole sorry mess of boats suddenly unforgettably distinct.
Hana and Shunichi marry a month later in May 1942 at a Buddhist church in Vancouver. It is a simple ceremony, followed by a meal with close friends and family in a Chinatown restaurant. But it is hardly a time for celebration. On a threeday pass from Hastings Parks, Shunichi and Hana begin their married life together aimlessly walking Vancouver’s streets. They have no money to enjoy some of the city’s attractions, and there’s no escaping the stench and chaos that awaits them in separate dormitories at the end of their so-called honeymoon.
Knowing they could have waited to marry under more favourable circumstances, the couple decided marriage offered the only hope of staying together. Otherwise Shunichi would surely be shipped east to join the road camp crews. He goes to Lemon Creek instead, where a work crew is busy assembling the shacks that will be home for the next three to four years. Kaname Izumi accompanies him to the interior where they live in leaky tents for the summer, their hammers pounding down the valley for weeks. When Hana finally joins him that fall, they are ready to make the most of a bad situation.
Life falls into a routine without a future. Confined to the camp but allowed to work in the bush nearby, Shunichi piles lumber for a small logging operation while Hana volunteers to teach school. Since the provincial government reneged on its obligation to provide education for camp children, the B.C. Security Commission steps in to fund grades one to eight. Staffed mainly by high-school graduates like Hana, the pri-mary schools offer the children an adequate education. Finally, missionaries are given permission to teach kindergarten and high school classes after church groups apply pressure on the government.
Pregnant with her first child within a year, Hana leaves teaching. In February 1945, she brings a son home from the Slocan hospital to the tiny shack in Lemon Creek that they share with her parents and siblings. Had they been American citizens, they might have been on their way home, albeit not necessarily to a friendly one. The U.S. Supreme Court is about to rule that restricting the movement of loyal Americans is unconstitutional when authorities announce Japanese Ameri-cans can go home in January 1945. But for Shunichi and Hana, home will never be the ones they left behind. Home is an elusive concept from the past and imagined for the future, a concept that they struggle to pull into the present.
In the spring of 1945, Mackenzie King’s Liberal government presents internees with two choices: go east of the Rockies or “repatriate” to Japan. The political pressure comes from the White Canada Association and certain British Columbia MPs, whose self-appointed campaign is: “Not a Japanese from the Rockies to the Sea.”
Faced with the uncertainty of starting over in the east, Shunichi and Hana sign up to go to Japan. The choice is made somewhat less difficult by the fact that Shunichi wants to see his parents again. Although he has never been to Japan, he feels he will be going “home” to his mother and father.
In August 1946, the Isokis pack their belongings and carry eighteen-month-old Stanley aboard a steamship at a Vancouver dock. The two-week crossing has its moments. Crammed into the ship’s hold with other deportees, they nearly suffocate from heat as they steam through tropical waters. When it be-comes unbearable, Shunichi asks a sailor to open a door. Cool air rushes in, but a passing officer reprimands the sailor. “Make those people suffer,” he commands, slamming the door. Shunichi complains to the ship’s captain, who replies, “I can’t do anything for you. It’s out of my jurisdiction.”
When he sets foot on Japanese soil, Shunichi finally shakes the racism. In that sense, he does arrive home. But the tradeoff rocks his sensibilities. The steamship anchors in waters south of Tokyo Bay while passengers are ferried ashore to Kurihama. Approaching the dock, Shunichi and Hana watch people scrambling like rats after cigarettes being cast ashore. Hana shifts Stanley’s weight and returns her husband’s glance. They recognize their mistake, too late.
Images on the train are equally shocking. People in rags flood the stations, welcoming strangers and friends home from the war. Perhaps they think the Isokis are returning from Manchuria or the South Seas, but none guess they are Canadians. Shunichi and Hana accept the homecoming welcome with mixed feelings: disoriented, to be sure, but touched by the compassion of those who regard them as fellow survivors. The atrocities committed in the Japanese prisoner-of-war camps are like the injustices perpetrated in Canada in one regard: a minority with influence and power practised a patriotism gone berserk, beyond the knowledge of ordinary, albeit often brain-washed, civilians.
Shunichi works for the American occupation forces over the next four years, first in Atsugi manning a telephone switch-board, then in the foreign mail section in Osaka, translating and summarizing prisoner-of-war letters from Manchuria for the benefit of American officers.
While in Osaka, he lives in a dormitory for foreign nationals and battles loneliness on his stints away from his family. At the end of a long day, Shunichi enters the dormitory one after-noon and discovers there is a package for him. Troubled from fighting the dull ache of depression all day, he flushes when he sees the Canadian stamps and then the return address: Kaname Izumi, Hamilton, Ontario. Shunichi strides toward his bed and opens the box. Gingerly, he pulls out neatly folded socks, underwear, and a few shirts. Candies, cookies, and other goodies intended for Hana and Stanley are nestled in between. Such treats are impossible to find here. He rummages through the tissue and finds a note in Kaname’s elegant handwriting:
“Shunichi, I have a good job, and we are doing fairly well. If you need anything, don’t hesitate to write and ask for what-ever it is. Chiyo sends her love. We hope you’re all well. Write soon, Kaname.”
Falling onto his bed, Shunichi peers at cracks of sunlight cutting through bamboo blinds above his feet. He knows Kaname is probably fighting tough times too, but he sighs with relief. Happy memories flash across his mind, and his depression lifts: he has ambled out of the dark into sunshine, warmed by the thought that his boyhood friend remembered him.
As American army personnel, Shunichi and his family are well fed. But he cannot escape the starvation around him. Its face looms in the gaunt eyes of young children watching him nibble his lunch, and in mothers bent over sorry vegetables wherever they can scratch out a patch of soil. Its face haunts Hana too. She gives bits of food to destitute beggars who traipse onto his parent’s small farm on the mountainside, which she tends for long backbreaking hours with her in-laws. It feeds a starvation of a different sort in them, a psychological hunger for home.
In 1950, Shunichi’s sister Kikuno suggests he take his family back to Canada where they will be happy. His parents are home, but he cannot seem to find it with them. Jiroichi and Shyobu mingle among the wider community, free in ways they never knew in Canada. Faced with one of life’s uncompromising realities, Shunichi decides to take his wife and five-year-old son to the only country where he can hope to find that peace.
Having said farewell to their children on both sides of the Pacific, his parents don’t see them off at the train. The final parting with their only son revives old pains and promises new grief, so they say goodbye in their living room. For his part, Shunichi trails their memory across the Pacific Ocean and the North American continent, stretching the link into oblivion.
When they arrive in Fort William, Ontario, it is forty-below zero and Hana’s turn to grieve. Her father died while they were en route.
Shunichi does manual labour of one sort or another while continuing to work toward a goal he has tucked under his belt since Lemon Creek. By coal oil lamplight in the internment camp shack, he completed his grade nine and ten math by correspondence. While working for the American army in Japan, he polished off high school bookkeeping at night school.
After they settle with Hana’s family in Fort William, Shunichi builds a cubbyhole next to the coal bin in the basement. For three years he comes home from his day job and retreats to his “study” to work on night school assignments. Following a job transfer to Toronto in 1956, Shunichi graduates as a registered industrial accountant. His first bookkeeping job enables him to work his way into accounting positions that secure his future until retirement.
It is a long way from the anchorages of his youth, where the winds and tides off British Columbia’s coast once cradled him in sleep.