Interviews

1. Father’s success in farm business

2. Yobiyose system in Canada

3. Japanese community in Mission

4. Father’s will to have Japanese education

5. Sent a letter to his brother in Canada after the war

6. Emperor as a living god

7. Liaison between the Americans and the Japanese

8. Laid off for being Canadian

9. Reason to come back to Canada in 1954

Bill Hashizume

(b. 1922) Canadian Nisei who was unable to return to Canada from Japan until 1952

Reason to come back to Canada in 1954

Well, it's much easier living here. Far better. Japan, although they lost the war, was pretty well still a closed society. The company structure was more feudalistic, the construction company was really feudalistic. If you weren't a relative of the founder or anything, why, you'd never get to the top. So it was much easier to make a go of it in Canada, so I came back. And I think I made the right decision. Sure, after I left, Japan embarked on an industrial come back, and you know how prosperous she is now. Now it makes me wonder whether thing, but no, it's hard for me to make the thing because I, I went to Japan when I was sixteen, and I still had the customs, Canadian customs. And it's hard to get used to Canadian society and life per se. So my judgment was this is probably better if I went back to Canada and started over again.

Canada immigration migration

Date: October 29, 2005

Location: Toronto, Canada

Interviewer: Norm Ibuki

Contributed by: Sedai, the Japanese Canadian Legacy Project, Japanese Canadian Cultural Center

Interviewee Bio

William "Bill" Tasaburo Hashizume was born on June 22, 1922 at Mission, British Columbia where he spent his early years. In 1939, after his father passed away, Bill's mother took Bill and his two younger sisters to Osaka, Japan for schooling. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Bill and his family were stranded in Japan. Hashizume resumed his studies and graduated from Kobe Technical College in 1944. Facing conscription, he enlisted in the Japanese Imperial Navy soon after and served as an Officer until demobilization in 1945.

After the war, Hashizume joined the U.S. military police in Japan, serving as an interpreter. As the Canadian government imposed a ban until the early 1950s on the return of Canadian citizens of Japanese descent who had been stranded in Japan after Pearl Harbor and those who had been repatriated to Japan in the late 1940s, Bill was not able to return to Canada. In 1952, Bill's Canadian citizenship was reinstated by the Canadian government and he returned to Toronto, Canada to join his sisters.

Hashizume became a full-fledged Canadian engineer at the age of 55. He was employed at the Ontario Department of Highways as an engineer and retired at 65. He has also researched and written a book on Japanese Canadian history of Mission, British Columbia. He currently leads an active and healthy life in Toronto, Canada. (August 23, 2006)