Touched By Dispossession
As our project evolves, we have gathered stories of individual and communities that were touched by dispossession. We are grateful to the contributors and we are honoured to to share these with you.
Do you have a story?
Landscapes of Injustice Claim Series #5 Examining the Sato Fonds
This article in our series on the four claims highlights Claim #2, Dispossession Required Sustained Work. It comes to us from Laura Saimoto from the Vancouver Japanese Language School, one of our partner institutions. Congratulations to the hard work to have their...
Landscapes of Injustice Claim Series #4 The Story of Cinderella
Claim series 4 Kaitlin Findlay Eiko Henmi Continuing in our series of short essays relating to the four claims of Landscapes of Injustice, this one comes from Research Coordinator, Kaitlin Findlay Claim #2: Dispossession is hard work. In Canada, the dispossession...
Landscapes of Injustice Claim series #3
Claim series 3 Lorene Oikawa The Story of Oikawa Island Continuing with stories in our series about the four claims of the project, Lorene Oikawa relates her father's story and the community that they created on Oikawa and Sato Islands. Claim #1 is the killing of home...
Landscapes of Injustice Claim Series #2 The Case of Gordon Robertson
Claim series 2 Josh van Es Gordon Robertson Continuing in our series of short essays relating to the four claims, this one comes from Josh van Es, an undergrad at UVic and a Landscapes of Injustice research assistant in the Narrative Website cluster. Claim #3 states...
Landscapes of Injustice Four Claims Series #1 My Aha Moment
Here is our series of articles based on the four claims of Landscapes of Injustice. Claim series 1 Jordan Stanger-Ross Vivian Rygnestad Look up! Landscapes of Injustice has a new logo. We decided to refresh our look this summer, just in time for our signature public...
The Lost Fleet Exhibit Launch Report: A Case Study
Photo credits: James Hollko By Mike Abe It was an honour to speak at the event launch of the Lost Fleet Exhibit at the Maritime Museum of British Columbia in January. The exhibit was on loan from the Vancouver Maritime Museum from Jan.-Mar., 2019. At the launch, I...
Dispossession Couldn’t Stop a 60-year Commercial Salmon Fishing Tradition for the Kadowaki Family
Submitted by Ron Kadowaki My father, Tadashi Kadowaki, along with my grandfather, Katsuki Kadowaki, were commercial salmon gillnet fishermen at North Pacific Cannery on the Skeena River before the Second World War. With the internment, their boats were confiscated and...
Paldi-The town that time plum forgot. A story of dispossession and repossession
The Town That Time Plum Forgot By Michael Abe My mother, Ruth Abe (nee Toyota) was a young girl when her family was uprooted and sent to Popoff and New Denver during WWII. She was the second youngest of 14 children born to Shoshichi and Kiriye (nee Obuchi) Toyota...
Lillie Reiko Hamaguchi’s story as told to her granddaughter Lillian Michiko Blakey
"Tied up" - Mixed media collage -Lillian Michiko Blakey In 1996, I asked my mother Lillie Reiko Hamaguchi to write her story for her grandchildren. Since then I have been dedicating my artwork to the telling of my family story of relocation. See www.blakeyart.ca...
1500 Chickens- By Sally Ito
This is one of the entries of short anecdotes about writer Sally Ito's late Nisei great aunt. This one deals with dispossession, but not your usual possessions. You can read all forty stories at http://cowbird.com/grdvph/stories/chronological/ 1500 Chickens By Sally...
More Than Possessions – Ohina san (Girls’ Day Dolls)
More than Possessions Masako Fukawa, Burnaby, BC My family lived in Steveston surrounded by relatives connected by blood and the fishing industry. Both grandfathers started in fishing. My paternal grandfather left Japan in 1893 and on arrival in Canada entered the...
My Grandfather Takateru Takarabe’s Story of Dispossession
By Donna Buck A few years ago I had sent away for the government’s archived records with regards to my Grandfather, Taketeru Takarabe and the sad story of trust, betrayal and dispossession as all Japanese Canadians of his time endured. I had often thought it would be...
Japanese Canadian fishing boat escapes dispossession
Late In 1941, Toshiaki (Jack) Goto took possession of his new gill netter - the last one built by the Suzuki Brothers Boat Works on Annacis Island. When he and his family were ordered relocated in 1942 his Finnish neighbor, Frans Jakko (Jack) Taipalus, bought the new...
Deep Bay Logging-the Japanese Camp in Fanny Bay
Submitted by Everette Surgenor, Castlegar, BC I believe that Mr. Kagetsu started his logging operation in Fanny Bay in 1923 and his timber license gave him access to timber from the highway up into the mountains between Coal Creek and north to Cougar Smith Creek. He...
Port Alice memories – Dee S.
Submitted by Kenna Barradell Victoria BC I was happy to hear about this project this morning on CBC. When I was very young, my grandmother shared stories about her early married life in Port Alice and the joyful times spent with the Japanese community there. She was...
‘Gently to Nagasaki’ -Joy Kogawa
Excerpt from Chapter 1 in Joy Kogawa's new work-in-progress, 'Gently to Nagasaki' Like twenty-two thousand other ‘enemy aliens’ during World War II, our family lost our home back in the 1940’s. I was in grade one. Suddenly we Canadians of Japanese ancestry had become...
Mizuno Family Camera
ca.1921 JCNM 2011.17.1 Mizuno Collection “Folding Pocket Camera.” Nikkei Images 16, no. 1 (Spring 2011): 24. This small and fairly ordinary No 3-A Autographic Kodak Folding Pocket Camera encompasses many stories. The Mizuno family ran a rooming house at 578 Alexander...
Midge Ayukawa
Ayukawa, Midge. "Lemon Creek Memories." Nikkei Images 17, no. 1 (Spring 2012): 11-16. Since December 8th when the Japanese language teacher had announced that the school was being closed and had admonished us that we were Canadians and to remember that our allegiance...
Cole R Harris
My grandfather, a young Englishman from a prosperous industrial family in Calne, Wiltshire, took up land on a bench above Slocan Lake between New Denver and Silverton in 1896, and planted a sizeable orchard. It was not successful; when the mines closed there was no...
Your stories of dispossession are important to us.
If you have a story of an individual, family, or community that was touched by dispossession, we would love to be able to share it with visitors to our site.
Do not worry if your story in incomplete. Important pieces of this history exist as fragments, half-remembered accounts, or rumours within communities. This site is a forum for sharing and working together to fill in the details of these partial accounts of the people who were directly impacted by these events.