File under Cover-up
Finally, keen-eyed readers will notice that we’re kicking off the new decade with a colour cover. A minor miracle you say? Not at all, we’ve simply switched printers, moving over to the good folks at International Web Express, and thought we’d offer up a splash of colour to mark the new year and what will hopefully be a long and fruitful partnership with IWE. We will be printing colour covers now and then throughout the year.

I hope everyone had a wonderful and safe holiday season. Each year gets busier and busier, or so it appears anyway.

Our membership is invaluable to us as a community organization. Each annual membership, along with the funds from our advertisers, provides us with the means to support the day-to-day functions of the GVJCCA, providing programs and services, and publishing The Bulletin each month. We encourage our members to keep their membership up to date. With our economy in such rough shape, we realize that sometimes this may be difficult. Please check the mailing label on the back cover for the expiry date. Your membership provides The Bulletin as an invaluable source of information about the Japanese Canadian community.

Upcoming this month will be the Greater Vancouver JCCA Keiro-kai which will be held on Saturday January 9th from 12noon to about 3pm at Nikkei Place at 6688 Southoaks Crescent in Burnaby. We have another excellent program planned to  honour the Nikkei seniors who have been part of our community for so many years. All those who are over 70 years of age, please register through Tonari Gumi (604.687.2172) soon as possible. Those of you who would like to volunteer, please contact Shag Ando at 604.922.9226.
The annual Nikkei Community New Year’s Party (Shinnen-kai) will be held at Nikkei Place on Saturday January 16th. Doors will open at 5:00pm, dinner at 6:00pm. Tickets ($45) are available through Nikkei Place. Please phone 604.777.7000 for additional information.

The GVJCCA will be holding its annual AGM on Saturday March 20th  in the GVJCCA office from 2-4pm. We are always looking for individuals who are interested in helping the community in all areas of community development, social justice, human rights, and Nikkei relations. Please come and attend. If you would like more information please contact the GVJCCA office.

Next month, Vancouver will be on the worlds stage, welcoming all the world’s top winter athletes for the 21st Winter Olympic Games (February 12-28) and 10th Paralympic Winter Games (March 12-21). This will be a great opportunity for Vancouver to show the sights and the multiculturalism that is part of our daily lives here. I hope you will be able to take this opportunity to be participate in this as well.

Have a great month.

Ron Nishimura
President GVJCCA

This is about my quest to discover the nature of the man who was my uncle and why he died. Takaharu Shimozawa was my father’s youngest brother. I never met Takaharu and my limited knowledge of him came from what my mother and father told me. He was born in 1919, fourteen years after my father Kohei. Takaharu‘s brother Masashi, was blind from infancy and three years older. Takaharu was devoted to his brother. He was Masashi’s eyes and inseparable companion as they grew up together in the village of Nishioi, near Odawara. He shared a dormitory for a time with his blind brother at the Methodist College of Kwansai Gakuin University in Osaka to assist him, then completed his own studies in Economics at the Baptist College of Kanto Gakuin University in Yokohama. He was charismatic, with a remarkable ability to draw people to him, gain their friendship and earn their respect. Like his brother Masashi, he became a devout Christian. His life was filled with promise. Then, immediately after his graduation, he was drafted into the Japanese Imperial Army and sent to a military academy for officer training. In 1944, at 24 years of age, he was sent to Borneo and never came back.

One day, in the early 1980s, perhaps 1984, my mother said to me, “David, there is something that I want to tell you about your father’s younger brother Takaharu, who died in the war.” She went on to say that Takaharu was put in charge of a prison camp in Borneo, where some prisoners were beaten and died. Takaharu was held responsible. He was tried by a British Military Court, sentenced to death as a war criminal and executed by hanging in 1947.

In October, 2008, I travelled to Japan with my son Derek. It was on our last night in Tokyo, at my older sister Atsuko’s home, that the subject of Takaharu’s death came up. I wondered aloud if the military training that Takaharu underwent in the Japanese Army could have changed him. I could tell that Atsuko was very disappointed that such a thought could ever enter my mind. She was dismayed when she learned that our parents had not told us about the circumstances of Takaharu’s death. She said to me “I don’t understand how our parents could be ashamed of Takaharu. He lived an exemplary, honorable life and I am proud to be his relative. He did nothing wrong. He was unfairly judged and put to death. In any case, it was the fault of the Japanese military. They took young men and sent them off to die in a useless war. He was a casualty of war.” Atsuko was 12 years younger than Takaharu, so she would have been 12 or 13 years old when he went off to war. I am sure that she revered him.

Shortly after we returned to Canada, I received a very moving letter in roma-ji from Masashi’s widow Yukiko-san. Yukiko-san told me that she and Masashi had made several pilgrimages to Borneo to visit the places where Takaharu had lived and died. They met several Japanese veterans who had served near Takaharu. They told her of the extraordinary compassion and generosity that he showed to the prisoners under his care, who thought highly of him and with great affection.

I wrote back to Yukiko-san to tell her that my mother and father never expressed any sense of shame about Takaharu. They only spoke of him with love and respect and like my sister Atsuko, they truly felt that his death was a tragedy. While we were growing up in Winnipeg, there was an underlying resentment against those of Japanese ancestry for the atrocities committed by the Japanese army against soldiers from Winnipeg who were sent to defend Hong Kong. In 1979, my family moved to the Lower Mainland, a community that is 30% comprised of immigrants from China, Korea and their descendants. Many still have very strong views about what the Japanese Army did to the citizens of Nanking and the plight of Korean comfort women. I tried to explain, that this is the reality of living in a ethnically diverse country like Canada and that our parents, with their silence, chose not to burden their children in Canada with the need to explain or take a position about the circumstances surrounding the death of their uncle.

I now felt compelled to discover what really happened in Borneo, so I obtained a photocopy of the trial record from the National Archives of the United Kingdom. After reading through this material a clearer picture of the events emerged.

Takaharu Shimozawa’s rank was Rikugan Shoi (2nd Lieutenant). On May 1, 1944 he was assigned to supervise a work group of 210 Indian soldiers at Lutong, Borneo. This group had been recruited by the Japanese to join the Indian National Army (INA). The INA was fighting against British rule in India and collaborating with the Japanese in Southeast Asia. The 210 Indians had signed oaths of allegiance to the Emperor and were assigned to work alongside the Japanese to repair the oil tanks at the Lutong refinery.

One of the Indians, Lachman Singh, escaped three times. His last attempt was in late November or early December and he was caught on Dec 8, 1944. That day, on Lieutenant Shimozawa’s orders, Lachman was put on parade, where he was beaten by the Indians, then by three Japanese soldiers under Shimozawa’s command. They were Jotohei (Superior Private) Kanji Saito, Heicho (Lance Corporal) Makino and Jotohei Hirai. He was then taken to the guard house, and tied to a pole. Lieutenant Shimozawa was called away to attend to an oil tank fire. When he returned two hours later, Lachman had died.

The trial was held at Labuan, Borneo on May 10,11,13 and 14, 1946. The Prosecution argued that Lachman, on Shimozawa’s orders, was savagely beaten in a deliberate act of murder and tabled two affidavits as corroboration. Also, Lieutenant Minoru Hatashita, an army doctor, testified that he conspired with Shimozawa to issue a false death certificate that stated the cause of death as Malaria. This, they said, was irrefutable proof that Lieutenant Shimozawa was attempting to cover up an intentional murder.

In his defence, Lieutenant Shimozawa testified that after each escape, he took Lachman Singh back and did not report him to the Kempei Tai (the Japanese equivalent of the Gestapo) or send him back to the Indian POW camp because he feared for Lachman’s safety. Lachman was beaten only on the buttocks and legs and not severely. He was told by his superiors that Lachman was an ally, not a POW and that he believed that he was disciplining Lachman as a Japanese soldier, with a view to correcting his poor behavior of stealing supplies, then running off. His intention was to get the punishment over quickly, then take Lachman back into the unit. Lieutenant Shimozawa added that Makino and Hirai, against his orders, beat Lachman again, while he was away attending to the fire and that he thought that this was the cause of Lachman’s death. He admitted that the cause of death stated as Malaria in the death certificate was false. Tatsuo Takahashi, a civilian who worked at the refinery, gave numerous examples of Lieutenant Shimozawa’s leadership qualities, moral courage, kindness and generosity to his men, who in turn respected and liked him.

A verdict of guilty was delivered at 10:00 hrs May 14, 1946. Takaharu Shimozawa was hanged at Jesselton Prison on Jan 11, 1947 at 06:02 hrs. His subordinate, Superior Private Kanji Saito was shot at Changi Prison, on Sept 27, 1946 at 06:30 hrs. At the time of the trial, Makino and Hirai were known to be, or reasonably believed to be dead.

Was the death sentence fair?
The Court ruled that Lachman Singh was a POW and British soldier, not a Japanese soldier. He was beaten, which was an illegal act, so the Prosecution had little difficulty making their case that a war crime had been committed. The burden on the Defence was to present a strong case to support mitigation of the sentences, but they were at a great disadvantage. The Court accepted as unassailable fact, the affidavits of two witnesses who were alive but who were not produced at trial for cross examination. The Defence could not present rebuttal witnesses from among the 210 Indian eye witnesses. They had been repatriated to India. Not surprisingly, the defendants’ statements were used against them. These were written in English, a language that they could not read and prepared by officers whose impartiality and competence to translate the nuances of the Japanese language appear, from the transcript, to be suspect. The accused never saw or signed a statement written in Japanese. Takaharu was allegedly beaten during his first interrogation. He was a POW at the time and had he died, it is unlikely that the officers who beat him would have been hanged.

Takaharu was not without blame. Lachman Singh died and never returned to his family in India, as a result of decisions that Takaharu made. Lachman had been in the jungle for at least four days. The decision to administer punishment that day, because he looked fit enough, was unwise. Takaharu should have been aware of any malevolence held by Makino and Hirai toward Lachman and taken stronger measures to prevent their beating him again. For these decisions, he had responsibility.

The Prosecution’s assertion, that the cover up was absolute proof of an intentional murder, is puzzling. A more plausible explanation is that Takaharu was worried about reprimand by his superiors for his misjudgments that caused the death of a Japanese allied soldier.

I believe that imprisonment and not death, would have been an appropriate sentence.

After reading the transcript, it is my personal view that Takaharu was the same exemplary man in Borneo that he was when he left his family in Odawara to go to war and that he was the generous, compassionate officer that Tatsuo Takahashi described in his testimony. I do not believe that he had transformed into a man who had Lachman Singh beaten to death in a murderous, sadistic rage for escaping three times, as suggested by the Prosecution and so readily accepted by the Court. If he wanted Lachman dead he could have simply called up the Kempei Tai to take him away, or he could have sent Lachman back to the Indian POW camp. Either action would have been an effective warning to the other Indians not to run away, if that had been Takaharu’s purpose.

Why did Takaharu die?
Labuan, in 1946 was the trial venue for all war crimes committed in Borneo. The three officers of the Court, all military men, would have been exposed, both in and out of the courtroom, to an unending stream of horrific accounts of atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army in Borneo and throughout Southeast Asia against their comrades. The Sandakan Death Marches in Borneo were the most notable of these atrocities. I believe that this hardened the hearts of the officers of the Labuan Court. They were in no mood to mitigate a death sentence. Unlike the arrangements at other trial venues, Colonel Yoshimori Yamada, the Defence Counsel, was not provided with an able Allied Counsel to assist him and he was unable to sway them.

My quest to find Takaharu—who he was and why he never came back, is over. When I reflect on what I have discovered, my final thought is that my wise older sister Atsuko was right: Takaharu was a casualty of war.

Here we are—2010 is here, with our Winter Olympics right around the corner. Living in Richmond for over 53 years, we are proud to have the beautiful Speed Skating Oval. Excitement is mounting!

January 1st is a important day in Japan. My mother said they celebrated for the first three days. While she was living, she insisted on cleaning the house from top to bottom from a week before and started making yokan and anything else she could start preparing ahead of time.She made konnyyaku too with lye. No cooking, no cleaning was the order of the day. Although she did make the ozoni, makisushi and ageh sushi that morning.

Thinking of Japanese dishes for the January column, I love this recipe from Vancouver Japanese Canadian Seniors Cookbook Home away from Home.

YAKIBUTA
4 lbs. (approx) pork tenderloin
1 Tbsp. vegetable oil

Sauce: 1 cup soy sauce
4 pieces garlic, grated
2 medium onions, diced
2 bay leaves
3 cloves, crushed
2 tsp. ginger, grated
3 Tbsp. sugar
2/3 cup wine
1 cup water

Preheat oven to 180 degree Celsius (350 F)
Cut pork lenthwise so that each piece is about 5-7 cm. thick. Fry with vegetable oil over medium heat until all sides are browned.
Combine sauce ingredients together and mix well.
Place fried tenderloin and sauce in a baking dish and simmer in oven for about 1 hour, turning meat every 15 – 20 minutes so that meat absorbs sauce.
Slice, spoon sauce over meat and serve.

Halve the recipe for a smaller serving size. The left-overs can be frozen and used in fried rice or ramen.

NIKU JAGA
2-1/2 cups water
1 cup shoyu
1/4 cup mirin
1/8 to 1/4 cup sugar
3 potatoes, cut in bite size pieces
1 oinion, sliced
2 pkgs. deep fried tofu
Itokonnyakku (300 g. pkg.) can use sliced konnyaku
1 lb. sukiyaki beef (thinly sliced beef)

Bring first 4 ingredients to a boil, then add potaoes, onions, konnyaku and deep fried tofu. Cook on medium heat for 45 minutes.
Then add sukiyaki beef and cook until browned (about 5-10 minutes).

MANGO PUDDING
1 box gelatin (4 pouches totalling 28 g.)
3/4 cup sugar
1 can mango pulp (750 ml)
500 ml whipping cream

Dissolve gelatin in 1/2 cup water. Add 1 cup of hot water. Mix well.
Add sugar to 2 – 1/2 cups hot water.
Mix mango pulp and whipping cream. Add gelatin mixture and sugar water.
Mix until well combined.
Pour into a 9 x 13 inch pan or into individual glasses and leave in refrigerator for about 3 hours before serving.

JAPANESE CABBAGE SALAD
Sally Hama brought this salad to our pot luck Ikebana Christmas party and many people wanted the recipe so here it is.

4 cups Korean cabbage (Savoy or regular cabbage can be substituted) sliced thinly
Kamaboko – thinly sliced (elongated)
Chicken breast – shredded
Chopped almond or ground goma
Green onion chopped
Celery chopped
1/2 cup ramen – broken up (add just before serving)

Basic Dressing:
1-1/2 Tbsp. sugar
1/8 tsp. salt
3/4 tsp. black pepper
3/8 cup salad oil
1-1/2 tsp sesame oil
3/8 cup Japanese vinegar
Grated ginger

Sally mixes this up and leaves it in the fridge. She used only half the dressing for this recipe.
Pour the dressing and the ramen just before serving.

Wishing you the Best for the New Year!

Christmas and O-shogatsu, festivities where we pray for the peace and happiness for our family and the world, have just passed. These events are cyclical. So are the winter and summer solstices and all things related to the four seasons, as the earth goes around the sun. As an individual human being, however, one feels the passage of time, noticing how much bigger one’s children have grown compared to a few Christmases ago, or how tall a cherry tree in one’s garden has grown, or even “how much hair I’ve lost” looking at one’s old photos—things that can be measured objectively. The passage of time from the year 19 whatever to January 2010 feels linear.

In Europe, people’s feel for, and attitudes toward, punctuality are different between the north and south. In Germany or Scandinavia, if one is invited to someone’s home for dinner at 7pm, the proper etiquette is to knock on his or her front door at 7pm. If they are visiting for the first time, many people would go a little early to check the location, and then kill time strolling around the neighborhood until the time of appointment.

But in countries like Italy and Greece, nobody seems to mind if one is half an hour late to a social appointment. Many years ago, I lived in Italy and have made return visits since, while I’ve been to Finland and Denmark several times, and I have visited Germany and Greece too. Incidentally, the UK, where I’ve also lived, felt to be somewhere in between (One can be late by up to 15 minutes?) and maybe it’s similar in North America in general.

There is one popular belief that attributes the difference in time sensitivity between northern and southern Europe to peoples who sense time linearly and those who sense time cyclically. In the north, people have always tended to conceive of time linearly, so that a social appointment at, say, “7pm on January 12th, 2010” means there is but one moment in time for that social appointment. So if one missed it, it’ll never come back. But in the south, time is felt to be more cyclical, so “if a guest misses a dinner appointment, one can arrange another dinner for tomorrow.” With everyone being magnanimous with time, being late by half an hour means little.

In the cities and towns of mediaeval Europe, people used to tell time by the ringing of church bells, until a new invention called the pocket watch enabled each individual to manage time on his own. As exemplified by the Swiss, who perfected that technology, efficiency and accurate time-keeping are the order of the day in the north. In the sun-drenched south, I came across the traditional way of telling time while visiting Lecce, an ancient city near the “heel” of the Italy’s boot-like shape. People used to look at the shadow of a giant obelisk standing in the middle of the main plaza, and tell time by on which street corner the shadow’s tip fell on, I was told. The ethos of the city dating back to pre-Roman Greek times was such that the people were still using the obelisk as a giant sun dial.

It is well-established that people living toward the equator are more relaxed than those living to the north. Generally speaking, people in urban areas of advanced industrialized nations live lives controlled by the clock, so they are naturally sensitive to the hours and minutes. And these countries are mostly in the northern hemisphere.
Tairikuteki (literally, continental) refers to the expansive ethos of people living in wide-open spaces as seen from people living in an island nation. One of the dictionary definitions of tairikuteki is “a take-it-easy (nonbiri) disposition.” Generally fastidious and steeped in a sense of collective responsibility, the Japanese, along with Germans, have a reputation for being punctual (e.g. “We run the most punctual trains in the world.”). So when Japanese people go to countries further south, from the middle east to south Asia, South America, Southeast Asia and even Chinese provinces inland, they would feel that “the local are lax about time.”
In the summer of 1981 I moved to Singapore from Tokyo to work as a journalist, hired by a new English-language daily that was starting up. One day, we reporters had to attend an important briefing by a government agency in the afternoon. Two younger colleagues and I decided to go to a famous Chinese seafood restaurant nearby for lunch beforehand. Having just arrived in the tropical city state, I assumed that my colleagues, who were locals and moreover journalists by profession, would take into account the amount of time needed to walk over to the meeting. But by the time we finished eating, settled the bill and walked over, perspiring heavily, to that office, alas, we were late. “Reporters arriving late for an appointment? That’s not good.” The information officer’s sneer was enough to make me break out in sweat all over again in front of my other colleagues.

Because of my assumption that “they as locals would know,” I lost a lot of face as I was just starting out in my new job. Although that was almost 30 years ago, I still remember my colleagues’ faces and names. How risky it is to assume that “such-and-such should be so” and not check! I learned my lesson in Singapore and tried to be as careful as possible thereafter. (But I have not been able to completely avoid mistakes arising from “assumptions” even after we moved to Canada 12 years ago.)

Differences in people’s sense of time exist within Japan as well. Some time ago, I wrote here about Hokkaido being like the “Canada of Japan” in terms of its people’s culture and sentiments. What is today Okinawa Prefecture and used to be Ryukyu Islands is also a valuable entity for today’s Japan. There are a series of websites featuring Japan’s provincial peoples making fun of their own cultures in good jest, including one called “Okinawa-jin Check.” Among the dozens of points cited like “We think it’s perfectly normal to eat rice topped with butter,” one says “We think it odd to get upset about a small thing like tardiness” and “If we have an appointment at 10 o’clock, we think it’s normal to leave home at 10 o’clock .” This is of course but one aspect of their native culture, but the pride of a people who were once an independent nation is also discernable.

The Okinawan people might feel the “mainlanders” to the north restless and hasty, as sense of time differs somewhat even between the peoples of Tokyo and Osaka. The Osaka people seem to be in more of a hurry. There was a study done many years comparing the average walking speeds of people in major central stations in Tokyo and Osaka, and the latter were faster according to the data. All in all, we human beings must be quite sensitive to time one way or the other.

Supposing 40 years of age to be around the half way point in one’s life, many older readers may have the experience of being engaged in something professionally or in living conditions that feels like a repeat of something they were doing decades ago. Do we not feel like some big cycle is at work? I used to make a living as a translator/interpreter back in Tokyo in the late 1970s . . . and have once again started doing more translations and interpreting since we came to Vancouver 12 years ago. I was quite keen on the guitar when I was a student but for many years thereafter, I barely kept it up, playing only when I felt like it. But since coming to Canada, thanks to the encouragement and enthusiasm of new friends, I’ve been able to practice much more and even play in front of audiences.

I also feel cycles in human relations. A few years ago, I was able to re-connect with a good friend from high school from over 40 years ago. It turned out he was living only blocks away from us right here in Vancouver. I can only thank the “turn of events” that lets me enjoy his warm personality again after all these years.

Things one cannot foresee and things that are regular, they both seem to come in cycles, I believe. Things that can be quantitatively measured, from one’s income to physical strength to one’s metabolic rate inevitably decline linearly. Such is life. Having accepted that, why not continue to reach for seemingly attainable possibilities? That would be my “reminder” for the new year 2010.

The cyclical spiral might be going around in a long and wide orbit, but the spiral ascends little by little…that’s how I see it. The first time this spiral idea “flashed” in my mind decades ago, I thought I’d made a great discovery, and have since mentioned it to others more than a few times.

Just a few weeks ago, my favorite essayist Shegesato Itoi wrote about the very same thing on his daily website Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shimbun and a few days later, my teenaged daughter suddenly started talking about “the spiral.” In short, it must be something everyone thinks about more or less.

I am rambling already as the new year starts. I am however resolved to ganbaru with you all this year with a renewed spirit of challenge. I hope you will continue to bear with me.

By Tatsuo Kage

In November 2009, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) of the Federal Government introduced a new Citizenship Study Guide titled Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship. Compared with the old guide, A Look at Canada, published over a decade ago, this new 63-page guide provides more details on topics such as the British Royal Family, Canada’s military services, Canada’s history and citizens’ responsibilities. Starting from March 2010, citizenship applicants will be tested on the knowledge presented in this new guide.
In order to come up with this new citizenship study guide, CIC (Jason Kenney, Minister) has consulted many experts including historians. There is a list of acknowledgement attached to the end of the guide which includes numerous organizations and individuals. However, as Japanese Canadians have noticed, the term used to describe the incarceration of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War remains inappropriately and erroneously “relocation”—an expression used by the government at that time. Furthermore, while it is natural to mention the capture and maltreatment of Canadian prisoners of war after the fall of Hong Kong, it is hard to understand the purpose of mentioning Japan’s paper balloon bombs and its attack on a lighthouse on Vancouver Island as neither event caused any real damage. I believe that these two events should belong to a more specialized history book of WWII.
Sometime ago, in 1999, I participated in producing a study guide in Japanese titled Kanada no Jyoshiki (A Guide to Canada) published by the former Greater Vancouver Japanese Immigrants’ Association. This study guide in Japanese provides readers with common knowledge that Canadians should know, as well as outlines of the history of Japanese-Canadians and sample citizenship interview questions. At this moment it is hard to access whether we will need an updated guide in Japanese based on the information presented in the new citizenship study guide, but I strongly feel that there is a need to examine the new citizenship study guide in details. The reasons are:

1.    This new citizenship study guide is distributed to all applicants in preparation for their citizenship test. Therefore, it is essential that the information should be clear, simple and accurate;
2.    I understand that the government may distribute this citizenship study guide to all high schools in Canada and it will be used as a course material for social studies. Therefore, it is crucial that the content be based on well-balanced judgment that is historically accurate.

Proposal: Discussion on the new study guide
Firstly, I urge you to get a copy of this Discover Canada and read it over. You can request for a hard copy which will be distributed in mid-December 2009.
You may also be able to read it online at

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/pdf/pub/discover.pdf

Secondly, I would like to propose a discussion on the contents of the new citizenship study guide. I encourage both immigrants and Canadian born people in the community to participate who are interested in Canada’s history, politics, concerns regarding rights of citizens including aboriginal groups, multiculturalism or education, and make their critical voices heard.

Thirdly, it would be a good idea to share our ideas and comments not only among Japanese-Canadians, but also with members of other ethnic communities. Then, our comments and critique should be presented to the government.

As a proposed process, I would like to urge the JCCA or the NAJC to take the initiative for an activity of reviewing the study guide.

It has often been pointed out that many Canadians lack common knowledge of their country, therefore, during the introduction of the new citizenship study guide, Jason Kenney implied that those citizenship applicants who have studied this citizenship guide might become more knowledgeable about Canada than those who were born and raised in Canada: “I’m frankly more concerned about historical amnesia and civic illiteracy amongst native-born young Canadians…”

All of us, including Japanese Canadians, are looking forward to having newcomers from various parts of the world who become active members of their own communities and contribute positively to Canadian society. Although this new study guide talks about multiculturalism, it hardly discusses how ethnic communities or immigrants have contributed to our society by helping shape our nation and culture. From this point of view we want to collect feedbacks from minority groups and immigrants on how they would like their ideas to be incorporated into the new study guide.

Our Image of Canada
It is natural that immigrants and new citizens are expected to abide by the law of Canada and fulfill their responsibilities as residents of Canada. But many of us have different opinions and some reservations on areas such as Canada’s political structure, human rights within the country and Canada’s role in international conflicts. For example, the role of the Queen as our head of state; Canada’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan, and Canada’s failure to support the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples which is endorsed by the vast majority of the member states are issues which immediately come to mind. I believe it would be great if we could open up discussions including these issues and let the government know what the outcome of our discussions would be.

*This article was written originally in Japanese and submitted to the JCCA Bulletin, December 2009 issue. This is a translated version with some revisions.

Do you know there is a genuine Torii Gate from Japan in Canada? The Torii is a common sight in Japan but is unique in North America. Yes, there is one in Campbell River on Vancouver Island. It is located in Sequoia Park right across from the Museum in Campbell River. In the Museum the Matsunaga family’s cod boat the “Soyokaze” which was confiscated during World War II is on display. The Torii was a gift from the people of Ishikari, Hokkaido to celebrate ten years of twinning. It is known as the “Ishikari Gate”. It was built in Japan and assembled here on site in 1993. The plaque with Japanese lettering displayed on the cross piece is written in Kanji, the traditional writing style in Japan and says “Ishikari”. Campbell River’s gift to Ishikari was a totem pole carved by renowned local artist Bill Henderson. The pole was placed in a prominent setting beside the Ishikari City Hall in the Fall of 1993.

In 1983, Campbell River signed a twinning agreement with Ishikari to promote an exchange that would mutually benefit each of the communities. One measure of the success of the twinning program between Campbell River and Ishikari is the number of citizens that have left their homes and schools to stay in each of the twin cities for a few days or for a year-long homestay. Over 800 citizens have travelled back and forth between our two communities since the beginning. Economic, cultural and educational benefits have enhanced the many ties of friendship. Two programs have been established for students. Every year, the Senior Exchange Program chooses two secondary students from each city to attend school in their twin city where four or five families host them. In the Young Ambassador Program every other year around 30 younger students stay with a host family for ten days. In 2008, the two cities celebrated their 25th anniversary of the twinning agreement by visiting each other’s city. The former Consul-General of Japan in Vancouver, Mr. Seiji Otsuka was invited to be one of the witnesses of the new proclamation of the sister city agreement signed by the Campbell River and Ishikari Mayors on June 30, 2008 in Campbell River. I was fortunate to be one of the delegates to participate in the 25th anniversary celebration held in Ishikari in September 2008.

Now the Torii at Sequoia Park has company, a 34-foot totem pole. The new totem pole honours the Sewids, a local First Nations family which has a rich history. The totem pole was carved by Rick Sewid and Max Chickite, both renowned carvers.

Campbell River is surrounded by ocean and mountains. It has many old and new traditions and still retains a small town friendliness. Why not come and visit, and discover this beautiful North Vancouver Island city. Of course, the city is also well known as the “Salmon Capital of the World” and the Mecca of Eco-Tourism of Vancouver Island. There are many other attractions near Campbell River such as Mt. Washington shown here. Campbell River Visitor Centre’s website is www.campbellrivertourism.com .

by Mizuho Ogasawara, Campbell River

Cy Saimoto sat down with The Bulletin at the Vancouver Japanese Language School to discuss his recent trip to Japan and his vision for the School.

In His Own Words

Cy Hisao Saimoto
INTERVIEW

You were born in 1928, so you remember the pre-war years. What was life like back then?
For the first immigrants to come here, it was a tough life with all the discrimination. Because the Japanese traded amongst themselves, Powell street became Japan Town before the war. They all lived around this area. Before the war, the Japanese School had over a thousand kids.

What did your father do before the war?
He came here in 1907, working as a fisherman, and then as a fish buyer for B.C. Packers. Fish buyers would buy the fish from the fishermen and bring it to the cannery and get a commission to sell it to the cannery. He had a 62-foot seine boat built called the “May S”. But the Japanese couldn’t get a licence to seine, so he chartered out his boats. They used it to haul salmon in from Alert Bay into Steveston with this boat. In summertime I used to go to the packer on the river, collecting fish.

You went to Minto Mines during the war, what was it like?
We were evacuated from here in ‘42. The thing is, the B.C. Security Commission was run by government people: Austin Taylor, H.R. McMillan, and W. H. Moffatt. Austin Taylor controlled all the mines, Bralorne mine up north in the Chilcotin there, it was still going in ‘42 and he had people in that area looking after the property they owned. They had homes built there for the miners, and then the depression came and the gold went flat so they all moved out, so they were ghost towns. But someone had to look after the place, right? So there was a fellow called Bill Davidson that looked after that property and they said it was a good deal for the Japanese to come here, good rent. So that’s what happened. We paid rent, we were what you call self supporting, we didn’t get any help from the government. Our parents thought the war would only last a year or so, so we didn’t have to get any help from the government. Quite a few families went on their own. But most couldn’t go on their own, so all the people on the coast, the government shoved them all into Hastings Park, the stables there. I’ll never forget that. You don’t treat people like that. I’ll never forget all that in my lifetime, anyway. We want to let the young kids—second, third, fourth generation—know what happened. It’s history.

Was there school in Minto Mines?
I didn’t go to school no. I worked in the sawmill, 42 cents an hour. I worked all over. There was no high school there, so my dad says, oh, we better move out of here, so in 1945 we moved to Revelstoke. There was a high school there, but you couldn’t live in the city limits either, there. So that’s where I finished my high school. But during that time I worked in the logging camps in Rogers Pass. And then in ‘49, I even worked for the C.P.R., 55 cents an hour, this kind of thing. I worked in the ice house. Do you know how they cooled those the C.P.R. rail passenger car cars? With blocks of ice underneath. The air comes up and cools the car. I used to ice those hot air conditioned cars, and then fill the seaboard freight cars, you know, fill them with ice, because they’re shipping fruit and produce from the Okanagan. But it’s good training for you, you know. You’re a young kid. But I just felt sorry for my parents, that’s all. That age, coming back, nothing to start with, you know, that’s tough to take, to losing everything . . .

You become involved in the Vancouver Japanese Language School shortly after the return to the coast. What was the importance of the School to the community?
This is the only institution that’s been here over a hundred years. A lot of people think oh, the Downtown Eastside is a bad area, so they dump everything here. But to us, I like to save the heritage, the Nikkei heritage. In order to do that you’ve got to have a building or place so the young people have somewhere to gather. And all I tried to do is bridge this for the sansei and the yonsei, so they can carry on back and forth with Japan, so the culture keeps carrying on. It’s a legacy, you know. We’ve been here over a hundred and thirty years. The first Japanese came here in 1877, and the school started in 1906. And then the First World War came, the Depression came, and the Second World War came, we lost everything. Discrimination was so bad here. They (the Canadian government) tried to send us all back to Japan, to repatriate in ‘46, ‘47. But we didn’t go. We fought like hell trying to get something back. We got the School back. This is the only property officially that we know of that was returned.

What did your father do after the war?
My father was a good businessman, you know, his line of credit was good. Before the war my dad was in the salting business, packing caviar and salted salmon to Japan. So he had a lot of connections in Japan and he had a lot of connections here too. After the war, he got back into the import/export business working with the Nelson Brothers Fisheries and the St. Mungo cannery on River Road in Surrey. Richie Nelson was the boss you know. You shake hands with him and the deal’s on. You don’t know what our parents had to go through. Even going through life, we can’t imagine what kind of hardship they had to go through. That’s why I’ve always wanted something like this, this community area saved. If nobody’s around here, it will be forgotten.

In addition to helping rebuild the School, you were one of the founders of the Vancouver Judo Club.
Yeah. I used to play judo at the judo club in Steveston before the war and when I came back, bunch of fellows like Tamoto and all those guys called me up and said, Cy, how about coming up and help us form the Judo club. I didn’t know too much but I picked up all the rules and everything before the war. So I came out and helped them out. We started the club in 1950, Vancouver Judo club.

One thing about Judo, any sport, doesn’t matter, you learn discipline. You come into the dojo, take off your hat, shake, bow, practice and that discipline is good. Today we lack that discipline. And that’s the problem with young people. You don’t have that discipline. Because you got to get that discipline when you’re still a young kid. It automatically grows in them. Today a teacher can’t discipline your kids. You know, that’s what people expect. I say, what do you mean? They can’t do that. It’s the parent’s job to discipline.

But it’s nice that you’re in a position that you can help people. That’s a good feeling. You can’t buy this kind of thing. I know friends that got all kinds of money, they’re lonelier than hell.  What the hell for? do something I said. But they’re that type: they don’t want to go out and this and that. I like to help people, the community. If the bottom moves up, you move up automatically. You don’t have to have that ego. But everybody isn’t that way.

There was pressure to relocate the school somewhere else, wasn’t there? A lot of Japanese left the area years ago . . .
That’s right. A lot of people want to forget, want to forget the past. That’s why I was involved with the church, too, the Vancouver Buddhist Church. We built that new building 30 years ago. We asked all the membership what they wanted to do, they said they wanted to build there. 1977 was a hundred years since the first Japanese came here, so we made a project and built the Church in ‘79—exactly 30 years ago.

A place like this (the Language School) is very hard to put together and maintain. This school is all operated as a volunteer organization. It’s hard to maintain a place like that. Anybody can build something, but how are you going to maintain it if you don’t have young people following? That’s my thinking. So 25 years from now or 50 years, I don’t care, I won’t be around anyway but they’ll say, you made a good school here.

By giving, you get something back, don’t you?
Yes. I don’t expect to get it back right away. Life is a circle. It’s a nice feeling that eventually it will come back, maybe not in your time, maybe your kids time or your grand kids time. It might come back, might not . . . the Japanese expect it to come back all the time. Right away. It doesn’t come back that easy. It’s like my golf game, I go this way and that but at the end I’m going to get it in, you know. You have to have patience, you can’t get mad when you’re helping the society, you know. Sometime you get mad at yourself, but you can’t show that. You have to hold back. Because the good times will come if you hold back. You know, your turn will come.

You are a Buddhist?
Yes, I’m a Buddhist. But I’m not a really religious guy, I’m just a human being. But the Buddhist teaching is really nice, you know. Everyone that dies, you have a first year memorial, third year, seven year, etc. You get all your family together, you know, for the service, and then we have lots of things to eat and drink, and talk about what your father did, your ancestors did. It’s your own flesh and blood. Young kid hear, gee, my grandfather did all that, you know. It might come around. I don’t know, but at least you’re sowing the seed. Just like sowing a seed, do you expect everything to come out? No. A small percentage comes out, that’s great. Same with the School here. That’s why I’m interested in this School. Having a daycare centre and kids coming when they are small. Once they grow up, there’s something there they never forget. When they’re middle aged they say, oh, I went to that school, I better come and volunteer my service here. I don’t know. It might happen. But if I don’t do anything, nothing happens.

We Japanese people are very strong. Once they set their mind, they’ll do something. Right? I mean, we lost everything during the war, and came back. We put up the church, we built a new wing at the School now. I mean you got to give credit where credit’s to be given. They’re fighters. You know, if you don’t have the will, nothing happens.

I don’t imagine you can sustain the school with only Japanese students—is the student population diverse in terms of ethnicity?
Yeah, pure Nikkei is less than 30 percent now. There is a lot of mixed marriages, some with no Japanese blood. That percentage is over 15 percent now I think. They just love Japanese culture and Japanese language, or they had some connection with Japan. Many of the kids that come here are actually trilingual, or quadlingual, so it just enriches their life to have another language.

We want to make this place kind of an educational centre. Eventually, once it starts going, we’ll have teachers from different countries come here. That’s what my dream is one day. Maybe it will never happen but you can’t depend only on the Japanese. The numbers are so small. Today we only have about 70,000 in the whole of Canada. After 130 years.
Before the war we went to English school, and then after, from 3:30 to 5:30 we took Japanese. Lots of parents pushed us to go there. When you’re a kid you want to play hooky and go to the movies in the afternoon, this kind of thing, but I never played hooky because if I got caught, boy, I know I’m going to get it. You don’t learn very much—that’s all right. It’s just like sending the kids here: you think they’re not learning anything but they’re learning. That’s what my dad always said, travel when you can. Meet people. Listen to them. If you don’t meet anybody, you know you don’t hear anything. Business is same too. You know, I am a businessman myself so I used to meet people.

You just came back from Japan, where you received the Order of the Rising Sun for all your volunteer service. How was that?
To me, it’s not a big deal but it’s a big deal in Japan. It was announced November the 3rd and the ceremony was on November the 11th, and so I went there, and for me to go there, you know, it was amazing. It’s an all day deal from nine o’clock in the morning. You sit around and this and that, and then they serve you lunch. And then after all the presentations, the foreign minister gives you the scroll, and then they give you the medal. And then they take you to the palace, to the Emperor, and there’s thousands of people lined up, and he speaks for a few minutes, then he walks all around in front of us there. It’s something. So I got out of there close to six o’clock, you know. All the days I was there I had a party every night. Oh, that’s tough to take, you know,  but it’s a real nice feeling to get that. I thought it was good for the community to get something—I was the only one from Canada.

I just want to make sure it gives a lift to the Downtown Eastside area here, that’s what I want to make sure, not only the Japanese, but the whole neighbourhood. You know, let’s work together, do something, go fight city hall, work together.

One thing that’s impressed me about the school is that you’ve really gotten involved in the community around here and not just kept to yourselves. I understand you have another project underway . . .
Yes, our Heritage Renovation Daycare Project. We’re planning a green renovation of our Heritage Wing to add a full-time daycare centre We’ve received seed funding from the provincial government, so we want to kick off a fundraising campaign to raise another half a million. That’s what we’re trying to do so we can fix the building. When I ask for donations, I say I don’t care how much you give, it’s how much you can afford to give. You know the Japanese way of doing it is the guy who gives the most gets their name on top, you know, put pressure on people. I never did it that way. It’s the little ones that count. These are the people that are going to maintain this place. The big ones are just there, bang, and that’s it, leave nothing behind. But you know, it’s going to last fifty, a hundred years, who’s going to maintain it? It’ll become a warehouse, you know, so you need the small ones, lots of small money donated. It’s not the amount. I want to borrow your heart. Your hundred dollars or the other guy’s thousand is just the same. If you can only afford a hundred, that’s great, you know, people that can afford a thousand, great. People that can afford ten thousand, that’s great too.

We’ll become one of the largest child care centres in BC. And at the same time, because we are a heritage building, we decided to also make it an interpretive centre, to tell the story of our history. We’re doing special green features like the solar thermal panels and green programming as well to make it one of the most innovative centres in BC.

What are your plans for the future?
We’re looking at the long term in the next 25 to 50 years, so we will continue to adapt as we have over the past one hundred years. There are a lot of businesses, small businesses cropping up around here. There’s no hall around here this size, so a lot of people use the place. That’s the kind of centre we would like to be. Basically right now we’re a community centre but in our next phase, we are adding a child care centre. We like to help the Downtown Eastside, not only Japanese—any race, doesn’t matter, just come to the place, use the place.

The Emperor and Empress visited your school during the recent visit. That must have been exciting.
We invited all the Japanese Canadian and local community representatives and you know it was great. This area does have problems but the people are great, actually, and there’s a lot of good stuff happening here. It was really a warm community welcome for them and they really appreciated it. The mayor showed them around and the councillors came and it was really nice because the whole community got together so we were really happy. With Mayor Robertson, we showed them our Centennial History Exhibit and then our plans for what we’re doing now and our renovation plans for the daycare. It was a historic day of celebration for the Japanese Canadian community and the Downtown Eastside.

Any last words you’d like to share with our readers?
To get involved with something like this, you got to sacrifice. So that’s why you have to get the right kind of people around you. Hard to do, but get people working. Become a volunteer. You know, a lot of volunteers say, I got to come and help. I say, don’t think that way. You’re not doing it for anybody. You’re doing it for yourself. That’s the kind of volunteer you want. I know, all the years I’ve been helping this church and the School. I mean, when you’ve gone through life you get to know all the angles. Volunteers are the same, there are a lot of volunteers that have an “I’m doing it for you” attitude. You know, if it’s that way, please don’t come. Come with the feeling that I would like to do something on my own to help you. To feel good yourself. Come in and help, you know. You don’t think that when you’re younger but when you get older, you realize this. That’s what I did, anyway. So I try to help everybody think that way, a little bit that way.