oral histories

Can you tell me about your family’s story and how your family ended up living in Steveston?

Well, my father immigrated to Canada when he was 18 years, 9 months he says, in 1928. His oldest brother, who was about 20 years older I think, he came to Canada in 1912. So, his elder brother sponsored him. Apparently, he jumped ship in Nanaimo in 1912. He came across with a cousin of his who was a captain of a freighter boat that used to go across the Pacific back and forth moving goods. He decided that things were pretty bad in Japan with the economy and job opportunities and high taxes; and then there was talk about, maybe, going to war again after the Russo-Japanese war of 1905. Anyway, he decided that maybe it wasn’t a good idea to be in Japan and he wanted to escape to Canada but I don’t think he knew how to do it. So, he got on his cousin’s ship and disembarked in Nanaimo, and that’s what he did. He got away in Nanaimo and, eventually, he started working in Steveston, but I think things were easier in Prince Rupert. They weren’t as sticky about whether you were a legal immigrant or not there. There were people that were willing to help people like himself who were, he was quite skillful as a shipwright in building wooden boats. So, they needed his skill and, so, people were willing to vouch for him or even forge papers for him to say that, you know, he was a legal immigrant.

My dad eventually came in 1928 and he was able to establish himself a lot faster because of his older brother. In those days, too, people in the same village or the same area would help each other. So, that was quite good, too. He was able to hook up with not only his older brother, and got involved in shipbuilding… When he was quite young he was helping out in the family shipyard and was able to work in other shipyards in the area so that he could expand his experience and learn from different masters. Anyway, so he started building boats, he said when he was fourteen he built his first boat. He said by the age of sixteen he was a journeyman shipwright. So, he came to Canada with some pretty good skills as well in terms of building wooden boats.

So… he was able to hook up with his older brother and start working right away and a similar kind of pattern where things were, maybe, tougher and more competitive in Steveston but less so up north. So, he went up north as well to Prince Rupert. He worked at the British-American Cannery up there. Also, with one of his cousins, he got a job collecting fish on a packer boat. So, Frank Egami, his cousin, was willing to [let him] work with him as well. That made it easier for him. Of course, because fishing was so good, he got into that as well [and was his deckhand on this packer boat]. In the summers, he would fish. In the off season, in the fall and the winter and the spring, he would work on the boat building skills that he acquired in Japan, and worked in that industry.

From about 1934 to 1938, his older brother had a shipyard in Steveston, just next to the Fishermen’s Wharf in Steveston. [In 1938] he had acquired four city lots – eighty feet of waterfront and about two hundred feet deep – between the [old] ESSO floating gas station and the Fisherman’s Wharf there. I think the Blue Canoe Restaurant is there now…. In 1938, his older brother, since he was the oldest, he was expected to look after his parents. So, his parents were getting older, so he had to go back [to Japan] and take care of them. He sold his shipyard to my dad. At the age of twenty-nine years old, he was quite young, he claims that he was the first and only privately owned shipyard on the coast that was owned by a Japanese Canadian. So, from 1938 to ’42, before when he had to work on a road gang, he had the shipyard. I think he built about sixteen boats.

In 1942, when the government took the shipyard away [during the Internment of Japanese Canadians] and then sold it against his wishes, he had three boats being completed and he had three other boats on the go, on deck. Basically, the wood would be dried and, you’d have all this equipment lined up so that he’d be ready to go to the next few boats. He lost not only his private residence, which was on the property of the shipyard and he had a storage shed in quite a large shipyard, he lost basically six boats. It was quite a shock to him that the government would take it away from him. I don’t think he ever did recover from that. In fact, I guess, after [World War II], Japanese Canadians weren’t allowed to come back. So, they were interned up until [April 1,] 1949.

So, from a road gang to Southern Alberta, where he ended up as a labourer on sugar beet farms [during Internment], he ended up moving about eleven times in Alberta because the farmers that wanted labourers, they didn’t want to hire people … and support a family of four young toddlers. So, his family wasn’t that popular as far as, so called, slave labour goes… you had to go to the central plaza in the city, or the village, or town, and the farmers would come in there and try to bid on who they wanted to take on or hire. I think they got paid a little bit of money but, by the time they ended up paying for the expenses of living on the farmer’s farm, I don’t think they made too much money. Anyway, it was very difficult for him and the family.

I think my oldest sister was only six when she was required to go to Hastings Park and there was my three older brothers who were two years apart. So, there was a baby, a two-year-old, a four-year-old, and a six-year-old. My mother, she ended up in a horse stall at Hastings Park for a month and that was pretty difficult. The conditions were pretty bad. Not only the smell but the fact that they were crammed together, they didn’t have privacy, and proper, well, basically, as far as education and healthcare and social services, it was pretty much non-existent. It’s pretty much being treated like animals, maybe a little better than a horse or cow, but, anyway, it was pretty bad. Anyway, fortunately, they only stayed a month there and then they ended up going to Southern Alberta where the government said that if they wanted to stay together as a family, they can go to Southern Alberta or Manitoba and be labourers in the sugar beet industry. That’s kind of interesting because some people didn’t have to work as hard from daybreak to dusk kind of thing. It’s kind of interesting that the government would try to convince people to say, well, you could stay together as a family, but you have to be a slave to these farmers. Anyway, the people that ended up in the Internment camps in the Interior, for example, didn’t have to work. They could read and do knitting and sewing and play sports. They had a different experience. It’s kind of interesting that the government convinced, or tricked people to go to Southern Alberta or Manitoba to be labourers on the sugar beet farms. Anyway, that’s where they ended up and my oldest sister, Aster, who was six years old at the beginning of that Internment, was saying that it was pretty brutal. Sometimes you ended up in chicken coops or storage sheds. You had a hard time getting water sometimes. Of course, there were no amenities to speak of, and the living conditions were pretty bad. She survived it and, I guess, in the end, she was able to overcome all the disruptions in her education and become a pharmacist. She claimed she was one of the first Japanese Canadian pharmacists in British Columbia. Eventually, she married a pharmacist and became quite successful. She ended up managing and owning six pharmacies from Coquitlam to Richmond.

Anyway, I don’t know. Is there anything else you wanted me to talk about? I can go on forever. I was just thinking, you know, sometimes I could go on tangents and ramble a bit, too. So, my wife reminds me that I’m like that [laughs].