Along with every other Japanese Canadian, Kishizo Kimura saw his life upended by events that began in 1941. His experience of the tumultuous decade that followed—his uprooting and internment, his loss of personal property and livelihood, his effort to forge a new life in a new place after the war—was shared with tens of thousands of others. But his story is also unique: as a member of two controversial committees that oversaw the forced sale of property, Kimura participated in the dispossession of his own community.

Beginning in early 1916, over 200 Japanese Canadian recruits began military training in Vancouver. These men went on to fight in the Canadian Expeditionary Forces, participating in the major battles of the Somme, Vimy Ridge, Lens, Avion, Hill 70, Passchendaele, Amiens, Arras, Cambrai, Denain, Valenciennes, and Mons. 55 were killed or died of their wounds. Only six came home uninjured.

In early 1942 over 8,000 Japanese Canadians were detained in Hastings Park before being sent to internment sites in the BC interior or to work camps across the country. It’s a part of Japanese Canadian history that is little talked about particularly by those who experienced dispossession and removal directly.  An outdoor exhibit at the original Hastings Park site at the PNE and related website on Hastings Park 1942 (www.hastingspark1942.ca) preserve the stories and images of this important history.

Online exhibit In July 1942, the Tashme Internment camp, the largest in Canada, opened its doors to Japanese Canadians who had been ordered removed from the coast following the bombing […]