Chasing the Past: The Writing of New Denver

New Denver

Internment camps in B.C.’s wilderness are all I recall,

And I’m too old to think about the past with bitterness in my heart.

I fell in love with you in the camp so long ago.

It kept us from the hatred and bigotry that existed outside.

 

New Denver is washed away with the rain.

New Denver will never know, never know the pain

It caused.

 

The government took all my property but I’ll survive somehow.

And all I can offer you is a lifetime of hardships my love.

Maybe love’s not worth much in these troubled times

But it’s the only thing we can live on on the outside in the snow.

 

New Denver is washed away with the rain.

New Denver will never know, never know the pain

It caused.

 

bridge:

New Denver is gone away at last.

We weren’t different.

We were just, we were just dangerous

So they say.

 

We are happy now in Toronto’s wilderness of grey

But I can still recall those pain filled days.

Gone are the hatreds of the white society

But why must our children be so bleached and so confused to be free?

 

New Denver is washed away with the rain.

New Denver will never know, never know the pain

It caused.

 

Terry Watada

© 1970 SOCAN


 

by Terry Watada

watada02During the latter part of the 1960s, I played rock and R&B music in various bands around Toronto. The quality of the music ranged from amateurish (i.e. bad) to semi-professional (i.e. fairly good). The band names reflected the times: for example, the Buddhist Basement Boys, the Proprietors, the Blues Society and the Asia Minors. The music was mostly top forty and, later, more ambitious FM radio fare.

In 1969, I appeared solo on stage outside City Hall in Nathan Phillips Square. The Vietnam Mobilization Committee commemorated Hiroshima Day with a concert and notable speakers. I suppose I was the Asian component. I nervously stood my ground and performed anti-war songs. Fortunately, I received thunderous applause making me feel a step closer to Bob Dylan than the Beatles at that point.

With the dawn of the 1970s, I found other musicians’ music a bit lacking even if it was by Santana, the Animals or the Rolling Stones, and the band I was in was breaking up anyway, so I left rock music deciding instead to become a singer/songwriter. I knew in order to perform songs of substance, I had to write my own material. Like most writers, I had to draw from my own experiences but I soon realized I didn’t know much about my family’s history. In fact, the Sansei were what I call a “lost generation,” deprived not only of their history but of their culture and traditions.

So I asked my mother. She immediately dismissed me with a curt “baka,” but I persisted and she eventually told me she married my father through an arrangement. I was shocked since we didn’t do that in Canada (I was only 19 at the time). She also told me of the internment camps, another subject about which I knew nothing.

After many talks, I set about writing my parents’ story as my first song. I had learned a unique chord progression from a friend, “Fast” Eddie Lee, who was part of the Singing Knights, a well-known Chinatown folk group. He learned the ringing variation on the standard D G A structure by listening to Gordon Lightfoot. So I used it as the base for my song. The lyrics came surprisingly easy; then again, I wasn’t aware of songwriting conventions and so made it up as I went along.

I imagined a couple like my parents living in Toronto recounting their life together, all the suffering during the war years and the subsequent psychological hangover from those days. Time shifts from verse to verse to give certain poignant moments a sense of immediacy. I hoped I was successful in that regard.

The lyrics appeared in the 1970 New Year’s edition of the New Canadian. Alan Hotta, a Sansei, filled in as interim editor while K. C. Tsumura was on vacation. Alan called me up to express his admiration for New Denver and to ask me to join a group of like-minded Sansei in a “rap” session to discuss issues common to Japanese Canadians – identity, racism and the internment. I did and my world opened up.

I introduced the song and a few others during the two Arts Nights I organized for the 1972 Asian Canadian Youth Conference in Toronto. I discovered I had an audience – Sansei and CBC (Chinese Born Canadians) from Toronto and Vancouver. It was a heady moment.

I further developed my repertoire and started on the road. Notable appearances playing the song included the inaugural Powell Street Festival, the 1977 Centennial Sansei Youth Conference in Toronto, Winnipeg’s Folklorama, the Ottawa Rally, the Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre in New Denver, and Toronto City Hall during the Redress Celebration. I felt I had come full circle with that performance.

New Denver also inspired me and others to produce Runaway Horses, the first record by and for Japanese Canadians. It was after the very positive reception of the music at the 1977 Centennial Sansei Youth Conference that I, Martin Kobayakawa, Garry Kawasaki, and Frank Nakashima set up camp in Larry Sasaki’s parents’ East York basement to record. About a month of weekend recording later, we had the four tracks down and ready for mixing, which was done in due course. Larry’s father and Larry himself provided the art work and we were set to go. Maybe a month later the record became available featuring eight original songs, including Go for Broke, Sansei Theme (Where Do We Go From Here?), Scenes by Martin, and of course, New Denver.

With New Denver, I began my chase of the past. It has propelled me to explore and produce more about my heritage and my community. None of the work however has had the same kind of impact. I have received many letters over the years from Sansei and Yonsei telling me what the song and the album have meant to them. I can only hope New Denver remains relevant and will continue to mean something to generations of JCs hence.