New Denver in World War II
At the behest of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King (1874-1950) and BC Premier John Hart (1879-1957), the internment of some 22,000 Japanese Canadians remains the largest mass exodus in Canadian history.
In April 1942, expulsion began to internment camps in the BC Interior, with the first arrivals in the Slocan Valley and Kaslo in May. Camps were set up in Kaslo (about 1,200 internees), Sandon (933 internees), the Girl Guide camp near Hills, Rosebery (356 internees), around the New Denver golf course, New Denver, Harris Ranch between New Denver and Silverton, and south of Silverton at Slocan City (595 internees), Bay Farm (1,376 internees), on the government-leased farm of Emilie and Konstantine Popoff, known as “Popoff” (more than 1,000 internees) and Lemon Creek (1,860 internees).
Japanese Canadians began to arrive in New Denver on May 21, 1942. It became the third largest camp in the province with 1,505 prisoners (1942).
In 1943, a 100-bed sanatorium for tuberculosis (TB) was constructed in New Denver’s Orchard area, and Japanese Canadians were sent there from across BC. It was the largest medical facility for Japanese Canadians in the province.
At the end of the war, the Canadian government gave the ultimatum of moving east of the Rocky Mountains or being exiled to Japan. This became known as the Second Uprooting. Initially, 10,000 signed up for “repatriation,” about 4,000 went to Japan.
All internment camps were eventually bulldozed, destroying the evidence of incarceration, except New Denver. Those whom the BCSC deemed “TB cases, ‘incurables’ and the very old without children to look after them” were moved to the Orchard from outlying camps: 1,200 people remained under the authority of the BCSC until 1957—12 years after the war. And so, New Denver became the only sizable postwar Japanese Canadian community, with the San as the focal point. Although the “San” closed in 1951, families remained to maintain a vibrant Japanese community for decades afterward.
Had TB patients, the infirm and their families not been shipped to New Denver from abandoned camps, the Japanese Canadian community in New Denver would have vanished along with the other camps, and the Kyowakai Society would not have survived as long as it did, forming in 1943 and disbanding in 2018.
Today, the Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre (NIMC) remains one of the few tangible remnants of the World War Two Japanese Canadian internment era and is a main attraction for those wishing to explore the Kootenay area and the other prison camps located close to New Denver.
NIMC’s Thirtieth Anniversary
New Denver’s Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre (NIMC) celebrated yet another historic milestone with its 30th anniversary celebrations June 22. Former New Denver mayor Gary Wright acted as master of ceremonies, with new NIMC director Elinor Morrissey and current Village of New Denver Mayor Leonard Casley welcoming everyone.
Following speeches and letters from dignitaries, Tomiko Potts performed her poem “When the Blossoms Fade.” Kevin Okabe, Executive Director of the National Association of Japanese Canadians, and Cary Sakiyama, president of the Greater Vancouver Japanese Canadian Citizen’s Association, both spoke. Then Diane Morita Cole read a letter from Norm Ibuki (reprinted below). Following these speeches the cake was cut and enjoyed by all those present. Uzume Taiko performed a wonderful set. Yoshie Bancroft and Joanna Garfinkel presenting three showings of a film of their play the Japanese Problem.
The day was busy with a martial arts demo from the Slocan Valley Aikido Group, a pickup baseball game, and a taiko workshop by Uzume Taiko. In the evening, guests enjoyed a catered dinner at Bosun Hall, with NIMC gardener Hiro Okusa commenting on a slideshow depicting the progress of the garden from its earliest inception. Okusa was a protégé of the late Roy Sumi, who designed the garden. Ken Butler, original construction manager for the centre, spoke about the Canadian government’s apology and redress initiative being key factors in the establishment of NIMC.
Remarks by Norm Ibuki
Dear Friends of the Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre,
Thank you for inviting me to speak to you with the help of my friend, writer Diana Morita Cole, who has volunteered to read some words of mine at this auspicious event.
Thirty years ago… I was living in South Slocan. Even though my time in the Kootenays was short, less than a year, so much happened here for me: I was introduced to the practice of aikido by Jean Rene Leduc of Kaslo. I connected to Keith Kessler, who was operating Lemon Creek Lodge. It was at his place where I first landed after leaving Bowen Island. It was really here in the Kootenays where I began to get a better sense of who I am as a Japanese Canadian. I’m still working at it.
So, it was a few years after the 1988 Redress Settlement that I started on my journey of trying to pull together an understanding of what it means to be Japanese Canadian in a country where we were imprisoned just for being of Japanese ancestry. Mom’s family, the Hayashidas, were imprisoned down the way in Slocan City and Bayfarm. After Dad’s family lost their Surrey farm, they went to a Manitoba sugar beet farm so that they could stay together. My good friends Lloyd Kumagai and Tak Matsuba, both now passed on, were child prisoners at Lemon Creek internment camp. Their families decided that going to war-torn Japan was a better option than to stay in racist Canada. They were among four thousand JCs who were exiled to war-torn Japan. Tak and Lloyd stayed there.
Today, New Denver is really too beautiful to imagine that it was ever a prison camp, but it was. I came here not as a prisoner but as someone who was looking for some things that were lost for my generation because of the internment. It was here that I could put some of the pieces together. I was fortunate to be able to meet and befriend Mrs. Chie Kamegaya, who passed away 27 days after the grand opening; Pauli Inose, who was a TB patient at the “San;” Bronwyn and Sakaye “Sockeye” Hashimoto who still reside here; Nobby Hayashi, a talented baseball player and the first Japanese Canadian allowed to live in Silverton; Judy Murakami who ran her dad’s logging business in Rosebury; Kay Takahara; Mrs. Hoshino; Gayle and Mel Swanson; Sumi and Spud Matsushita; Tamara and Ian Fraser in Kaslo; Katherine Megumi Shozawa; Hawaiian-Japanese artist Ruby Truly Hastings; artists Paul Gibbons and Tsuneko Kokuko. They are my New Denver.
As an elementary public school teacher in Brampton, Ontario, I am proud and grateful for what you kind and generous people have accomplished here. In the truest spirit of Kyowakai, working together peacefully, you’re working to create a future that is free of racism and prejudice.
For me and many other JCs, the memories, hopes and dreams of so many people still echo through these buildings, on this hallowed ground, graced by Roy Tomomichi Sumi’s Japanese garden design, the Kyowakai Hall and the wonderfully restored shacks. While the internment did wreck so many innocent lives, the paradox is that the survivors of New Denver internment who chose to stay created something beautiful out of those ashes of internment.
Knowing my Japanese Canadian friends in New Denver as I did in 1994, I am not surprised by what those survivors of internment managed to create here. The NIMC is truly a miracle of sorts, through an alchemy only made possible by the love and determination that was poured into this project by both the members of the Kyowakai and residents of New Denver, using former internment shacks and the Kyowakai Hall. You are keeping that original vision alive with the same passion as those who planted those seeds in 1994. You have succeeded in turning what was a site of emptiness and despair in 1942 into a place of hope and healing.
Finally, to those who work week in and week out to keep the NIMC up and going, to the organizers of this weekend’s wonderful schedule of events and to everybody who traveled here to participate in the festivities, thank you.
Some of you were here thirty years ago. You know, as I do, that those who have since passed on are now here again among us, smiling with joyous gratitude and appreciation, saying:
Domo arigato gozaimashita. And, gokurosama deshita.
Thank you for your hard work, and thank you for remembering us!
* * * * *
All photos courtesty of Dustin Wilhelm.
© 2024 Norm Ibuki
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