The spring wind blows
Sharpened
on the edge of the Rockies
—Haruyoshi Tanouye, written about the Japanese-Canadian evacuation
ON A FINE DAY IN JUNE 1990, I drove south from Lady smith on Vancouver Island along the scenic old island highway, where the sapphire depths of Stuart Channel augment the comfortable residential landscape stretching along the route. It was the beginning of a journey that led to the writing of this book.
As a reporter for the local paper, I drove this windy road almost daily. I covered all manner of stories in the year I worked in the region, including an interview with a man who had just celebrated his 100th birthday. Scandinavian by birth, he had come to the west coast as a young man, abandoning his homeland to carve out a future in the rugged frontier. He worked as a longshoreman at the Chemainus docks in the days when sailing schooners from around the world carried cargo harvested from immense old-growth forests that once covered the bottoms of the Chemainus and Cowichan valleys. Much like old-growth stands today, his memory had faded into quiet oblivion. Nonetheless, he was part of the local history, a part which had remained where it set down roots.
On another occasion, I drove this road to catch the ferry to Kuper Island, home of the Penelakut Indian Band. As the ship approached the dock, the former residential school loomed in the middle of a large clearing of land, a bleak symbol of the injustice perpetrated against generations of Natives up and down the coast. Like First Nations people across the country, the Penelakut fell victim to a century of cultural genocide. Still, they maintain an undeniable presence in the local landscape, and are reviving their culture and pride on home turf.
Driving to Chemainus that day in June 1990,1 was about to encounter another chapter of local history, one which was all but gone from view. I had vague memories of learning some-thing in school about the Japanese Canadian war experience, and I was aware that they were offered compensation in 1988. I studied Joy Kogawa’s Obasan in a Canadian literature course at the University of Victoria, and was deeply moved by her lyrical prose and the poignant testimonies of the novel’s characters. But for reasons I still can’t explain, it was the plight of aboriginal people that engaged me on an ongoing basis. In one sense, my outrage regarding their treatment was home-less—until I met a Haida man in the 1970s. His name was Jerome Parnell, and his legacy was like that of so many: a childhood torn apart by death, illness, alcoholism, and poverty, leading to apprehension by provincial authorities and a life in foster homes, leading in turn to a life on the streets. When we met, I was naive enough to think I could help him heal and restore some inner pride. It was an ill-fated goal: my good intentions and feelings for him were no match for the depth of commitment and sheer hard work involved. Less than a year after the relationship failed, I gave birth to our daughter, Ellen Sarah. Five days after she was born, I gave her to close friends to adopt.
Ellen was ten when I met Shunichi and Hanaye Isoki in the Chemainus Festival of Murals office in June 1990. Because the adoption arrangement was open, she was then, and is now, a big part of my life. But the year and a half I had lived with her father was well in my past. Hearing the Isokis’ story touched all those chords again, except here were people who, somehow, had triumphed. I rushed headlong into a history lesson of a different colour, with a tangible and memorable face.
Accompanied by Kyoshi Shimizu, a Vancouver-born woman spearheading a mural project, the Isokis were in town to help with reunion plans to commemorate the Japanese community. It had been as much of a pioneering influence as that of any other immigrant group in the valley, yet all that remained of the Japanese presence in Chemainus a generation after they were scratched from the picture was locked inside memories: of school children who cried when classmates suddenly disappeared; of baseball chums and churchgoers, friendly and hostile alike; of labourers who gained jobs and shop owners who lost patrons when the community evacuated.
To be honest, I felt lukewarm about the Chemainus murals. It was not that I didn’t appreciate the local history that the paintings offered so much as the trivializing of it that accompanies such tourist-oriented ventures. Nonetheless, the town’s economy depended in large part on the internationally renowned murals, and they did offer graphic insights into the region’s past.
When I heard the Isokis’ story, I set aside my biases about the murals. Perhaps I couldn’t resist such a meaningful encounter with living history; maybe it was because the story had a “happy ending.” Whatever drew me to it was forceful, and I quickly became absorbed in learning about the community that had virtually been struck from the local history fare.
A year passed. I left my job at the newspaper and began freelance writing in Victoria, where Kyoshi Shimizu lived. Over a series of interviews, I learned that her involvement in the Chemainus project grew out of an association with Shige
Yoshida when she was a social worker in Tashme. Near Hope, British Columbia, it was one of the largest Japanese Canadian internment camps. Mr. Yoshida was a scoutmaster whose boy scout troops were formed as a result of racism, and thrived in spite of it. As an adolescent in Chemainus, he had been rejected by the local scout troop on spurious grounds. So he took a correspondence course and formed his own troop in 1930, which had the distinction of being comprised exclusively of Japanese Canadian boys. In Tashme, he organized a troop that numbered over 200 by the end of the war, the largest boy scout troop in the British Commonwealth.
More importantly for Mrs. Shimizu and many others, Mr. Yoshida’s efforts offered the boys a bridge to the white man’s world, a way of instilling pride in themselves and a means of demonstrating loyalty to king and country. A retired social worker and ardent community spokesperson, Mrs. Shimizu felt that the history depicted in the Chemainus’ murals was woefully incomplete without the story of the intrepid scout-master. With characteristic determination, she set about to change that.
As one of Shige Yoshida’s assistant scoutmasters, Shunichi Isoki returned to his birthplace for the first time in forty-eight years to help plan for the mural. But he had another motive as well, one much closer to his heart. His baby brother was buried in the Chemainus cemetery, and his grave was among those whose markers had been bulldozed after the community was uprooted. In the 19605, replacement headstones were erected along a fence because the whereabouts of the original graves were unknown. Those markers also disappeared. Mr. Isoki believed passionately that the memorial monument planned for the cemetery would help restore dignity to the deceased and their families.
It had been a long time coming. A Shinto-Buddhist organization based in Vancouver had been trying in vain to establish the whereabouts of those interred in Chemainus as part of a project to restore Japanese sections of cemeteries on Vancouver Island. Until Reverend Harry Costerton became pastor of the Anglican church in 1988, the committee was told there was no record of Japanese graves in Chemainus. Costerton determined otherwise. During a cemetery clean-up after his arrival, five stone markers were discovered under a pile of debris just outside the cemetery fence. A sixth was found in 1991.
The reunion was planned to coincide with the O-bon festival, an annual Buddhist tradition which had not taken place in the Chemainus cemetery since August 1941. In A Child in Prison Camp, Shizuye Takashima explains: “In August is O-bon, the festival for the dead, to wish joy for their souls and to remember them.” Burning candles to light the way for their ancestors, family members welcome home the spirits of their beloved in a simple, dignified ritual.
So it seemed that the reunion in 1991 would be a homecoming on a grand scale, a rare opportunity to heal the wounds so many had stubbornly tucked away for better or worse. They would return to the place their parents called Chimunesu, for the immigrants were unable to wrap their tongues around Chemainus. As with pioneers from other lands, the Japanese had forsaken a great deal to forge a better future for their offspring on the wild west coast. But Chimunesu evolved into an enclave of shacks and boarding houses destined to be torn from their grasp, a place which nonetheless harboured memories of all moods for those who once called it home.
The reunion homecoming on August 10, 1991 was as charged with emotion as one would expect. Old baseball friends mingled in the heart of what had been Kawahara camp as if nothing had changed in fifty years—except everyone knew that virtually everything had changed. For those who participated, the celebration was all-consuming.
Predictably, not everyone who lived in Chemainus during the war years came out for the reunion. There are some in the community who still call the town’s exiled residents “Japs” and who mistrust their motives, those who still harbour deep hatred against them because of atrocities perpetrated in Japanese prison camps. Some still have curios they stole or picked up at auctions, just as there are residents with Japanese gravestones on their properties—in chimneys and fireplaces, in a retaining wall, in the corner post of a house. But there are also those who came forward with headstones and discreetly turned them over to the pastor. And there are many, perhaps the majority, who deeply regret what happened and yet maintain that the evacuation and internment were justified. It is what happens in a climate of racial hostility and war: extremists wreak havoc with normal sensibilities, moulding a hysteria based on ill-founded fears and hatreds. Against the advice of senior military officers and the commissioner of the RCMP, the government went ahead with the evacuation to further its political agenda.
From the outset, the opportunity to record the reunion seemed all mine. What started as a simple article for a community newspaper evolved into a magazine article and then this book. I was overwhelmed by the generosity of spirit, humour and pride of those who returned to Chemainus in August 1991. It struck me as important to offer a window into those early years of Chimunesu as they remembered it, a portrait of a community that perhaps would disappear with their passing. I wanted to find out how they got on with their lives and succeeded in spite of all that had happened. And I wanted to celebrate the goodwill of those in Chemainus whose efforts helped to exonerate the wrongs of the past, even though an undercurrent of resentment about the “The Lone Scout” mural tainted the occasion. Many felt the focus on Shige Yoshida was inappropriate, given the contributions of others that would go unnoticed.
With the emotionally charged experience of the reunion behind me, I travelled to Ontario to interview former Chemainus residents in the winter of 1992. I needed a more in-depth picture of their lives, as well as a sense of the places where they had set down roots—the places they now call home. Many struggled to gain acceptance in the industrial heart of Ontario after the war. They succeeded, but not without further incidents of racism in their efforts to find housing and work.
A few years ago, I cruised through Chemainus on a blustery October night. It was my first time back since the reunion, and I parked the car a block from the mural of The Lone Scout, directly behind the mill compound where Tomoki Kawabe’s crew had once sweated to stack lumber up higher than the roofs of nearby homes. I glanced at the modest piles of milled lumber, processed and stacked mostly by machinery, on the other side of the MacMillan Bloedel fence. Everything was still, except for a strong gusty wind blowing up from the harbour. I crossed Oak Street and found myself peering into the faces packed around the community hall in the mural. Whispering their names, I ran my fingers across their tiny faces. Behind me the street was black, deserted. Yet I knew I was not alone: the spirits of those who lived there were watching. I was not alarmed by their presence; I was reassured by it.
No Japanese Canadians have lived in Chemainus since the war. Restricted from returning to the coast until 1949, they were forced to start over elsewhere when the war ended in 1945. But if you walk along Croft Street and ponder the faces in The Lone Scout, you may feel a wind bearing spirits that will lift you back to the heart of a community that laughed and cried in its time.
A few miles south in a small cemetery, the Japanese community is no longer censored from the town’s history. The desecration of the graves of babies, children, women, and men in their prime, and the elderly is vindicated by a memorial monument. Old headstones engraved with calligraphy are stark, eloquent reminders of the past; modern marble plaques complement them, the names of the deceased etched in bold black letters: Yoneji Isoki, Miki Okada, Takeshi Okada, Towa Izumi, Nobuyuty Izumi, Shigeru Yoshida....
Ironically, there is also a stone marker bearing the name “Lang” in the Chemainus cemetery. Although that family is no relation of mine, no doubt we share a similar racial back-ground. It makes me an unlikely candidate for this material, except that the hope in this story is irresistible to anyone concerned with justice. Writing and learning about this black episode in our history has been a catharsis of sorts, putting my anger, sadness and frustration in perspective. More importantly, it has also taught me about the resiliency of the human spirit, as well as what life offers and what it takes away from all of us, regardless of race or class.
Some may consider it inappropriate for me to tackle this subject matter. I understand that point of view. Indeed, I may have misconstrued some cultural subtleties. However, I believe that we do not necessarily need to suffer racism personally in order to bring life experience, compassion, and insight to any subject that moves us.
To the people from Chemainus now scattered across the nation, I offer these final comments. For the benefit of consistency, I adopted the order of given name first and surname second, even though your issei parents used their surnames first.
In writing your stories, I have taken great liberties by creating dialogue and fleshing out scenes with details which may or may not have been true to the moment. If I have misrepresented anyone in any way, I apologize in advance for my lack of understanding. While I adopted fiction techniques to develop this book, the stories themselves are based on the true events of your lives.
Not everyone’s story is included, but I will remember the trust, generosity, kindness, and strength of all those I inter-viewed. Meeting you has touched me in ways that won’t leave me ever.
Regrettably, I did not finish this book in time for some. During the spring of 1996, four former Chemainus residents died. To the surviving members of their families and the former community, these deaths were among many since the war years to which I made little reference: for example, Satoshi and Mitsuo Izumi, Norboru Yoshida, Mitsuhara Otsu, Satoru Okada, and, naturally, most of the issei. Although the book includes references to deaths affecting many families over time, I did not anticipate that some of those I interviewed would be gone before the book was in print, and it draws my attention to the ailing health of a number of the aging nisei from Chemainus.
I note their passing with sadness, for each in his or her own way offered something to ponder or to cherish: Aiko Nakahara (nee: Higashi), a rebel in her youth with the guts to elope with the man she loved; Shizuka Okada (nee: Taniwa), an artisitic woman who believed in the goodness in people; Mitsuyuki Sakata, a once proud judo expert who fought Parkinson’s disease with courage; and Yuki Yoshida, a proud and gentle woman who set herself apart as an award-winning producer for the National Film Board.