On our sleepy little island, Remembrance Day was observed in different
ways. Groups gathered around radios to listen to the CBC, met at various
memorial spots on the island, or, like me, congregated at the store for two minutes
of silence, the playing of taps, and a cup of coffee. As the 11th hour
approached, little boys chased each other around the parking lot while the
adults stood in the sun and talked quietly about how high the lake is this year
and whose apples are storing well. We moved into the market, and made our way
past the deli counter to the tables where people gather daily for chats, meetings, and food. As I stood between the
garden gloves and the magazine rack, I looked around at the dozen or so people
and wondered about their war stories. This being Canada, the stories could have
been from any number of countries.
Mine is from Germany and it is the story that I
have shared with many students over the years during discussions of Remembrance
Day. I edit out the horrors of my grandmother's experience and focus on
her children.
My father and his siblings lived in a boxcar and stole potatoes
from the fields in order to survive after the Russian army threw them out of
their home to use it as housing quarters. My grandfather had
been conscripted, captured, and left to worry from his POW camp for the family
he was not allowed to contact.
I am very selective about what I tell students, but I want them to
understand that we are talking about real people, to understand that peace is a
gift which people in many parts of the world have had ripped away. I want them
to take in the difficult concept that elsewhere in this world, people are born,
live a lifetime, and die without ever knowing peace.
For me, Remembrance Day is a day of mourning for all the loss the
world has suffered because we as a species have not evolved past war. It is also my annual marker to check and make sure that I have not
forgotten and that I am doing my part to educate the next generation. A few days ago, the world marked the 25th anniversary of the fall
of the Berlin wall. Many people watched the celebrations from either side of
the West Bank Wall. Those
who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
When I was a young adult, I learned about the internment of
thousands of Japanese Canadians from the west coast. A young adult! How had I
managed to get through an entire Canadian public education without knowing
about our shameful past?
Teaching my students about the internment was my first real
encounter with the story. I chose to teach A Child in Prison Camp by Shizuye Takashima and wondered why this
was not a required component of study in Canadian History.
Here on Cortes, three Japanese Canadian families are mentioned in
the local archives of the early years, although only one, the Nakatsuis, were
living here at the time of the internment. In her book, Destination
Cortez Island, A sailor's life along the BC coast (1999), June Cameron
described "Jap ranch," as it was known, as a well-kept property. She
called it, "aesthetically pleasing as well as tidy and purposeful"
(p.200). June also had this to say about the Nakatsui family (she used a different
spelling of the name than my research supplied):
As neighbours, they were courteous and well-liked, but after Pearl
Harbour and the alleged sightings of submarines off the B.C. coast, even before
the declaration of war, the locals became understandably nervous. The Nakasuis
were evacuated to internment camps along with all Japanese people living on the
coast, and the fruit from their orchard was left to rot. When we went by in the
fall to pick some apples to take back to the city with us, we found their home
stripped of belongings. Unwanted objects littered the ground. It made me
ashamed to be a Canadian." (p. 199)
I told my Cortes Island students about the internment in general
and we discussed it at length. But it remained a story from "out
there." Not quite an abstract idea, but one they couldn't quite connect
to. So, I led them out to the display board in the hallway where a picture of
the island's first school bus was proudly displayed.
That truck, one of few on the island at the time, was also the
vehicle used to transport the Nakatsui family from their home. As the children
stared at the picture, I told them about our Japanese Canadian internment--and theory
became reality.
Over the years, the elephants in the living room of our collective
past have slowly begun to trumpet and I stand amazed and humbled by the stories from my First Nations neighbours, my Japanese
Canadian neighbours, my Chinese Canadian neighbours . . . and on it goes.
Shame and guilt are useless, energy-draining emotions; knowledge
is power. I want the next generation to be equipped with knowledge. And so . . .
In the summer of 2015, Salmonberry Publishing and I will be
launching a middle-grades novel called Full Moon Lagoon. I am very proud of this book. The story is an action-packed
adventure set here on Cortes. It is my hope that the children for
whom it was written will have a fun read, close the book and turn to an adult
to ask, "Did the government really make all the Japanese Canadians move
like that?"
Yes, they did.
And we must never forget.
