Browse the UBC Open Collections Japanese-Canadian Photograph Collection here.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n Japanese-Canadian history is most often discussed in terms of mistreatment of the minority by the Canadian state and society. Indeed, Japanese immigrants and their children were subject to explicit and legal forms of racist marginalization and exclusion throughout the first half of the twentieth century. The outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941 brought Canada\u2019s anti-Japanese policies to unprecedented heights. The government established what it called the \u201cprotected area\u201d along the Pacific coast to expel from it all \u201cpersons of the Japanese race\u201d irrespective of their citizenship status. What followed were internment, forced sale of properties they had to leave behind, as well as their dispersal east of the Rockies. Nearly 4,000 Japanese Canadians were even exiled to war-torn Japan, a country many of them, born and raised in Canada, had never seen. The community was destroyed and their rights were blatantly violated in this shameful chapter of Canadian history.[footnote]For works on Japanese-Canadian history with a focus on racist politics and wartime policies, see Ken Adachi, The Enemy that Never Was<\/em> (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1976); Ann Gomer Sunahara, The Politics of Racism: The Uprooting of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War<\/em> (Toronto: J. Lorimer, 1981); Patricia E. Roy, A White Man\u2019s Province: British Columbia Politicians and Chinese and Japanese Immigrants, 1858-1914<\/em> (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1989); Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship: The Japanese and Chinese in Canada, 1941-67<\/em> (Vancouver: UBC press, 2007); and Roy, J. L. Granatsein, Masako Iino, and Hiroko Takamura, Mutual Hostages: Canadians and Japanese during the Second World War<\/em> (Toronto; Buffalo; London: University of Toronto press, 1990). Greg Robinson provides a comparative analysis of Canadian and American treatment of persons of Japanese heritage during the Second World War in his A Tragedy of Democracy: Japanese Confinement in North America<\/em> (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009). For essays on Nikkei histories in Canada and America, see Louis Fiset and Gail M. Nomura, eds. Nikkei in the Pacific Northwest: Japanese Americans & Japanese Canadians in the Twentieth Century<\/em> (Seattle: Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest in association with University of Washington Press, 2005).<\/p>\r\n Some of these historiographies were closely related to the postwar activist movement to seek formal apology and redress from the Canadian government for its wartime mistreatment of citizens of Japanese lineage. Redress, achieved in 1988 with Prime Minister Brian Mulroney offering a formal apology in the House of Commons, was a momentous event in Canadian history. For developments of the redress movement, see Roy Miki and Cassandra Kobayashi,\u00a0<\/span>Justice in Our Time: The Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>(Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1991); Roy Miki,\u00a0<\/span>Redress: Inside the Japanese Canadian Call for Justice<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>(Vancouver: Raincoast Books, 2004).<\/p>\r\n Tatsuo Kage discusses the exile of Japanese Canadians in 1946 with rich oral historical accounts in his\u00a0<\/span>Uprooted Again: Japanese Canadians Move to Japan after World War II<\/em>, trans. Kathleen Chisato Merken (Victoria, BC: Ti-Jean press, 2012, orig.pub. in Japanese Akashi shoten, 1998).<\/p>\r\n Oral historical approach has been immensely important in recent discussion of Japanese-Canadian history. For studies employing oral historical methods, see Pamela Sugiman, \u201cMemories of Internment: Narrating Japanese Canadian Women\u2019s Life Stories,\u201d\u00a0<\/span>The Canadian Journal of Sociology\/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie<\/em>, 29\/3 (Summer 2004), 359-88; Sugiman, \u201c\u2019Life is Sweet\u2019: Vulnerability and Composure in the Wartime Narratives of Japanese Canadians,\u201d\u00a0<\/span>Journal of Canadian Studies\/Revue d\u2019\u00c9tudes canadiennes<\/em>, 43\/1 (Winter 2009), 186-218; and Mona Oikawa,\u00a0<\/span>Cartographies of Violence: Japanese Canadian Women, Memory, and the Subjects of the Internment\u00a0<\/span><\/em>(Toronto; Buffalo; London: University of Toronto press, 2012).<\/p>\r\n Important contributions to Japanese-Canadian history by community historians include Roy Ito,\u00a0<\/span>We Went to War<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>(Stittsville, ON: Canada\u2019s Wings, 1984); Ito,\u00a0<\/span>Stories of My People<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>(Hamilton, ON: S-20 and Nisei Veterans Association, 1994); and Masako Fukawa with Stanley Fukawa and Nikkei Fishermen\u2019s History Book Committee,\u00a0<\/span>Spirit of the Nikkei Fleet: BC\u2019s Japanese Canadian Fishermen<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>(Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Pub., 2009).<\/p>\r\n The dispossession of Japanese Canadian is being comprehensively examined and analyzed by researchers of\u00a0<\/span>Landscapes of Injustice<\/a><\/em>, a collaborative research project of which the author is a part as a postdoctoral researcher. Recent works by\u00a0<\/span>Landscapes<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>researchers include Jordan Stanger-Ross and Landscapes of Injustice Research Collective, \u201cSuspect Properties: The Vancouver Origins of the Forced Sale of Japanese-Canadian-Owned Property, WWII,\u201d\u00a0<\/span>Journal of Planning History<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>15\/4 (2016), 271-89; Stanger-Ross and Nicholas Blomley, \u201c\u2019My Land is Worth a Million Dollars\u2019: How Japanese Canadians Contested Their Dispossession in the 1940s,\u201d\u00a0<\/span>Law and History Review<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>35\/3 (2017), 711-751; Eric M. Adams, Jordan Stanger-Ross, and Landscapes of Injustice Research Collective, \u201cPromises of Law: The Unlawful Dispossession of Japanese Canadians,\u201d\u00a0<\/span>Osgoode Hall Law Journal<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>54\/3 (2017), 687-740; Stanger-Ross and Sugiman, eds.,\u00a0<\/span>Witness to Loss: Race, Culpability, and Memory in the Dispossession of Japanese Canadians<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>(Montreal & Kingston; London; Chicago: McGill-Queen\u2019s University Press, 2017; and articles in the\u00a0<\/span>Journal of American Ethnic History<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>special issue with Landscapes of Injustice forthcoming in summer of 2018. In addition to academic studies,\u00a0<\/span>Landscapes<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>is developing teacher resources, museum exhibit, and public history as well as archival website to share research findings with public audiences.\u00a0<\/span>Witness to Loss<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>also has a website providing compelling records of a Japanese Canadian man involved in the Canadian policy to dispossess people in his community. These are merely a selective sample of the wealth of works and literatures on Japanese Canadian history.[\/footnote]<\/p>\r\n This history of injustice is vital to our society especially in the face of entrenched discrimination and inequality persisting to this day. However, in contrast to the prominence of the narrative of victimization in established historical accounts, the social history of the community tends to be overlooked. You don\u2019t have to know anything about a minority to understand they were oppressed, after all. But like any other community, Japanese Canadians have fascinating stories to tell, and these can be analyzed in their own right to enrich our engagements with history. Aiming to provoke interests in sociohistorical experiences of Japanese Canadians and records thereof, this essay looks at the associational lives of several women in the Japanese-Canadian community during the early to mid-twentieth century.<\/p>\r\n\r\n O\u2019Melia-san was a white Catholic Nun who dedicated much of her adult life to Japanese immigrants and their community. This is attested to by her grave, situated in the \u201cEast Asian\u201d section of Vancouver\u2019s Mountain View Cemetery, where graves of Nikkei persons as well as Chinese Canadians are clustered together.[footnote]Nikkei means persons of Japanese lineage. In this essay, this term is used to refer to Nikkei persons in Canada, and is largely synonymous with Japanese Canadians.[\/footnote]\u00a0<\/span>O\u2019Melia-san\u2019s tomb is surrounded by those of Japanese Canadians. It was her wish to be with them, and so when she died of heart-attack while giving a catechist lecture in 1939 she was buried there. Of course, a cemetery is a place of symbolic significance. Among the most grandiose Nikkei tombstones is a towering twelve-foot stupa, built in 1934 with funds raised by a Buddhist Youth Association. It is dedicated to migrants who died in Canada without any relative or family member to offer them ritual care. During the\u00a0<\/span>Obon<\/em>\u00a0festival of the dead in August, Japanese Canadians make homages to deceased members of their community. O\u2019Melia-san is there, blended as she is into the ritual landscape of the community.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_1170\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"300\"] The Japanese inscription in the middle says \u201cO\u2019Melia-san\u2019s grave, built by Japanese volunteers.\u201d Beside her stone is Sister Antoinette McDonough\u2019s (d. 1985), built by \u201cJapanese community and friends.\u201d These women belonged to Franciscan Sisters of Atonement and ran convents serving Japanese-Canadian communities in the prewar era.<\/p>\r\n Kathleen F. O\u2019Melia was born in Norfolk, England in 1869.[footnote]For studies of O\u2019Melia-san, see Jacqueline Gresko, \u201cO\u2019Melia San and the Catholic Japanese Mission, Vancouver, B.C.,\u201d Historical Studies<\/em> 75 (2009): 83-100; Deborah Rink, Spirited Women: A History of Catholic Sisters in British Columbia (Vancouver: Sisters\u2019 Association Archdiocese of Vancouver, 2000), 216-20.[\/footnote]\u00a0<\/span>She arrived in Vancouver in 1902. Soon, she began working with Japanese migrants. In 1928, she was ordained in the Sisters of Atonement, which purchased a building at Cordova and Dunlevy Street in Vancouver\u2019s Japanese neighbourhood, around Powell Street. That happened to be right next to Oppenheimer Park, where the famous Nikkei ballclub\u00a0<\/span>Vancouver Asahi<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>put on great shows of tactical baseball against big-swinging players of local teams.<\/p>\r\n As a Franciscan nun, her formal name was Sister Mary Stella, but Japanese Canadians continued to call her O\u2019Melia-san. Earnest in her religious calling, she proselytized her faith to migrants but also offered services for the community, including English classes, daycare, and kindergarten. These catered to working mothers. It is said that about 275 children attended her kindergarten and daycare in the first year.[footnote]Lurana Kikko Tasaka, \u201cAn Unforgettable Past\u2014A Time to Remember\u2014With Gratitude,\u201d\u00a0<\/span>The Bulletin Gepp\u014d<\/em>, Jul. 1996, 12.<\/span>[\/footnote]<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_298\" align=\"alignleft\" width=\"300\"] Sister Antoinette McDonough, who worked alongside O\u2019Melia-san in the 30s, writes of her as follows:<\/p>\r\n She encouraged and inspired us with her great love and zeal for the Japanese people. Sister visited the sick in their homes and hospitals, she taught Religion and English, went begging, acted as interpreter and any other work that needed doing. Nothing was too much for her. I was fortunate to be her companion almost daily on her visits to wherever duty called, and so my first year in Vancouver passed very quickly and I hope not without catching some of Sister Mary Stella\u2019s charisma.<\/em>[footnote]Cited in Rink, 219.[\/footnote]<\/p>\r\n In addition to the \u201cSister\u2019s Place\u201d on Cordova Street, O\u2019Melia-san opened another convent in Steveston, a fishing village south of Vancouver home to many fishers who came to Canada from Mio village in Wakayama prefecture. With Sister Antoinette, O\u2019Melia-san walked door to door in Steveston to let women know about the daycare services they were offering. By 1934, there were sixty babies in the nursery and eighty children attending Sunday School.[footnote]Gresko, 94.[\/footnote]\u00a0<\/span>Many women working in canneries could leave their toddlers with O\u2019Melia-san rather than carrying them on their backs as they toiled on the production lines earning income for their families. O\u2019Melia-san learned to speak Japanese with Wakayama dialect just like the women around her did.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_299\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"300\"] The Catholic Sisters\u2019 involvement with the community continued after O\u2019Melia-san\u2019s death and into the internment era. When the removal of Nikkei people from the coast was announced early in 1942, Friars of the Franciscan order negotiated with the mayor of Greenwood in the interior to set up residential quarters for internment.[footnote]Rink, 220-25.[\/footnote]<\/span>\u00a0That is why many people from Steveston went to Greenwood, and Sisters moved with the community. Some rode on the same trains carrying people away from their homes in a seventeen-hour ride, in which internees, including mothers and infants, were prohibited from leaving their cars. Sisters did what they could to help along the way. Some nuns had gone to Greenwood ahead to help set up the camp and welcomed the arrival of people from Steveston. As Nikkei children were not permitted to attend public schools, Sisters opened a school and kindergarten and provided care and education for children and adolescents. They taught English grammar, high school courses, and even business and piano. As a result, students did not suffer from a lack of education and went on to succeed in various careers in mainstream Canadian society in the postwar era.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_300\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"400\"] The Japanese Women\u2019s Association (Nippon Fujinkai) was founded in Vancouver in 1904, seventeen years after the arrival of first known Japanese woman in Canada and had over 170 members by 1907.[footnote]My source on the history of women\u2019s associations is Nakayama Jinshir\u014d, Kanada d\u014dh\u014d hatten taikan, zen [Encyclopedia of the Progress of Japanese in Canada]<\/em> (1921), 1683-1702, in Sasaki Toshiji and Tsuneharu Gonnami, eds. Kanada iminshi shiry\u014d, vol. 8. Tokyo: Fuji Shuppan, 2000[\/footnote]\u00a0<\/span>With the growth and diversification of Nikkei communities and enclaves, there were at least nine Japanese Women\u2019s Associations in British Columbia by 1921. The largest of these were the Japanese Women\u2019s Association, the Buddhist Women\u2019s Association (Bukky\u014d Fujinkai), and the Christian Women\u2019s Association (Kirisuto Fujinkai). Haney, Steveston, Fraser Mills, Ocean Falls, New Westminster, and Swanson Bay were all homes of regional women\u2019s associations. Members of these associations worked tirelessly to support immigrants and their community. Aspiring for public good, they led charity campaigns and raised funds for hospitals as well as schools and kindergartens. They also sent relief and aid to Japan, extending support to those affected by natural disasters as well as bereaved members of soldiers who lost their lives in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). They also held discussions on various topics over afternoon teas, at times with members of white women\u2019s associations.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_302\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"1024\"] A photo of Japanese Women\u2019s Association from ca. 1910 [Figure 7]<\/strong> shows women wearing fine dresses and fancy hats with flowers, suggesting that prominent women took part in this association.<\/p>\r\n Children also typically appear in photographs of Women\u2019s associations, such as the one taken in front of Japanese Buddhist Church in Vancouver in 1920, found in\u00a0<\/span>UBC library\u2019s Japanese Canadian Photograph Collection\u00a0[Figure 8]<\/strong>. The women in this photo were most likely members of the Buddhist Women\u2019s Association, who gathered with some of their children at the church for their meetings and events.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_295\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"1024\"] Women\u2019s Associations also organized events for special and ceremonial occasions such as the emperor\u2019s birthday, receptions for dignitaries from Japan, and other celebrations. Below is a photo from a\u00a0<\/span>kanreki<\/em>\u00a0celebration, or sixtieth birthday of members of the Buddhist Women\u2019s Association, taken in Vancouver in 1939.\u00a0<\/span>They also sponsored floats paraded during festivals.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_303\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"300\"] Unfortunately, there is paucity of records on women\u2019s associations. What\u2019s available are accounts about them written by men rather than records produced by women themselves. Probably the most comprehensive of such accounts are found in Nakayama Jinshir\u014d\u2019s 2,036-page magnum opus on the immigrant community,\u00a0<\/span>Kanada d\u014dh\u014d hatten taikan<\/em>, published in 1921.[footnote]Ibid.[\/footnote]\u00a0<\/span>Nakayama chronicles meetings of the associations as well as their major projects and achievements. For instance, in 1909, Japanese Women\u2019s Associations raised over $1,000 for Vancouver City Hospital, and cleared outstanding medical bills that migrant patients couldn\u2019t pay themselves. In 1919, three Japanese women\u2019s associations contributed about $5,000 in a public charity campaign for the same hospital. Such charitable works were indispensable as government funding for basic medical care was insufficient. During WWI, immigrant men managed to work around a ban from serving in the Canadian military and formed a voluntary corps that fought courageously alongside the Allies in Europe. To support their efforts, the Japanese women\u2019s association in Haney worked with the Canadian Red Cross and sent special care packets consisting of bandages, pajamas, socks, and undergarments for wounded soldiers.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_304\" align=\"alignleft\" width=\"300\"] As Nakayama puts it, women empowered the community to transition from a collective of temporary\u00a0<\/span>dekasegi<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>workers to permanent settlers, and women\u2019s associations made great contributions to the progress of Japanese peoples on the frontier land. But these associations were highly institutionalized. Japanese Women\u2019s Association, for instance, had a president and ten women sitting on board for three-month terms. It even had an anthem sung during meetings. Women\u2019s associations, then, represent a formalized mode of women\u2019s network practices. Are there records that speak to more informal associational practices among women and their cohorts?<\/p>\r\n\r\n Hanako Sato (n\u00e9e Awaka) taught at the Vancouver Japanese Language School on Alexander Street from the 1921 to 1966, though she farmed in Alberta for about a decade after the school was shuttered by the government in December 1941. Together with her husband Tsutae, she devoted her life to the education of Canadian-born Nisei (second generation). Two years into her professional career as a school teacher in Tokyo, at age twenty, Hanako accepted a job offer from the Alexander Street school and decided to move to Canada. The offer included a marriage arrangement with Tsutae who was just promoted to principal. She knew him as teacher of her younger brothers.<\/p>\r\n Hanako\u2019s heart pounded in excitement at the idea of moving abroad. But she was concerned about her beloved and widowed mother whose approval she sought. The mother needed a night to think. After a sleepless night of deep reflection, the mother told Hanako she trusted her to make her own decisions. Then she went to Suiteng\u016b shrine in Nihonbashi, Tokyo, to get her daughter a special protective amulet as her memento. The amulet was presented to the altar of deceased father, then handed to Hanako the day before her departure. She held it dearly for the rest of her life. On May 12th<\/sup>, 1921, merely a month after first hearing about the offer, Hanako boarded\u00a0<\/span>SS Arizona<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>in Yokohama. Standing on the vessel\u2019s deck, she saw and heard her students shouting and cheering from the wharf, \u201cAwaka-sensei!\u201d again and again. The mother did not come, for, being raised in a soldier\u2019s household, she found it shameful to shed tears in public. Clasping the amulet tightly, Hanako bid farewell to Japan and set sail for Canada.[footnote]Tsutae and Hanako Sato, Nikkei Kanada-jin no nihongo ky\u014diku: zoku kodomo to tomoni goj\u016bnen<\/em> (Tokyo: Nichibou shuppansha, 1976), 201-207.[\/footnote]<\/p>\r\n Hanako\u2019s life in prewar Vancouver overlapped with the \u201cgolden age\u201d of their school. With the growth of the community, student enrolment increased from about fifty in 1909 to roughly a thousand by 1941, becoming among the largest Japanese-language school in North America.[footnote]Tsutae Sato, ed. Bank\u016bb\u0101 nihon ky\u014dritsu gogakk\u014d enkakushi, History of Japanese Language School (Vancouver: Bank\u016bb\u0101 nihon ky\u014dritsu gogakk\u014d ijikai, 1954), 91-96.[\/footnote]<\/p>\r\n However, Japanese language schools were often targeted by anti-Japanese politicians who made their careers by pitching exclusionary campaigns, taking advantage of the fact that the unpopular minority lacked political representation. A crisis came in January 1941 when the provincial government initiated a legal measure imposing restrictions on foreign language schools.\u00a0 To make matters worse, City of Vancouver alderman Halford Wilson launched a movement to close Japanese language schools. He alleged the schools were not only backed by the Japanese state and prevented children from Canadianizing but also posed health threats to students.[footnote]Sato, 193-218; Tsutae and Hanako Sato fonds, NNM 1996.170.1.6.1\/1.[\/footnote]<\/p>\r\n City Council established a Special Committee and summoned Tsutae for interrogation. Facing Wilson, Tsutae dismissed links with the Japanese government and explained the importance of the school for the community, stressing, as he always had, that the mandate of his school was to raise children into good citizens of Canada.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_306\" align=\"alignleft\" width=\"300\"] Wilson\u2019s move lost momentum. But the authorities demanded the schools adopt new textbooks, as the ones in use were too imperialistic. This prompted Tsutae to go to Japan to gather materials for textbook compilation, which would have been fine were it not for the escalation of tension between Japan and the US in the summer of 1941, just days after Tsutae\u2019s departure. As a result, ships from Japan were prohibited from entering North American ports. Tsutae\u2019s return became uncertain, all the while the contending states appeared locked on a collision course. Eventually,\u00a0 Tsutae returned to Vancouver aboard\u00a0<\/span>Hikawa Maru\u00a0<\/span><\/em>just before Japan and Canada entered war.<\/p>\r\n Hanako\u2019s diary begins July 19th<\/sup>, the day Tsutae left for Japan. She missed him dearly and she dreaded nothing more than the spectre of separation by the imminent hostilities she sensed in the air. Everyday she followed the news, hoping to see the lifting of the ban of ships from Japan. She wrote and telegrammed him. Board members of the school urged him to return as soon as he possibly could. She called him as well, speaking to him briefly in English through an operator in San Francisco. The choppy phone line cut their conversation when he uttered, \u201cIf I can\u2019t go\u2026\u201d<\/p>\r\n Amidst disconcerting circumstances, Hanako was comforted by visitors who came to see her daily. People in the community did what they could to support her. Not only did they call her all the time and dropped by her place with gifts and treats, they also sent their girls to stay with her so she did not have to spend nights alone. Below are brief excerpts from her diary (translated by the author):<\/p>\r\n\r\n Jul 19<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\r\n The house is now empty and lonesome. If I stayed still, sadness overwhelms me. So I found places to clean here and there, and kept myself busy. At night, I worked on the accounting book, but my mind wasn\u2019t clear. So I went to bed. I was in bed by 11. I couldn\u2019t sleep. Tsutae-san kept on coming up on my mind. I wonder if the ship reached the Pacific and is now rolling in big waves. I pray for a safe voyage. The thought of spending the next two months alone makes me anxious.<\/em><\/p>\r\n Jul 20<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\r\n Ochiai\u2019s mother called. She said to me, \u201cThe night when you send off\u00a0<\/span><\/em>[your husband]\u00a0<\/span>is very sad and lonesome. Last night, I wanted to send Kayo to your place but couldn\u2019t because of a little incident on our end. I will send her along today in the afternoon.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\r\n Just past two, Kayo-san came with some gladiolus. She asked if there was anything she could help me with, so I asked her to write names on pay envelopes. It turned out that the incident yesterday had to do with canned grapefruits that she and her family ate. Kayo\u2019s father became sick from it. Kayo-san was not affected too badly, but her father, with his poor health, vomited and suffered badly. When I hear a story like this I can\u2019t help but to hope that Tsutae-san would not eat foul food. I was going to ask Kayo-san to have some dinner, but her stomach is still not well. So she went home by evening.<\/em><\/p>\r\n Sat\u014d Matsue-san and Shizu-chan called me, too. They said, \u201cI had no idea sensei went back. Had I known, I would have gone to the port to see him off\u2026\u201d Shizu-chan said she\u2019d love to come by for a visit on Sunday.<\/em><\/p>\r\n Jul 21<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\r\n When I got home, your letter was in the mailbox. I read it again and again. It\u2019s only been three days since you left, but it feels like we haven\u2019t seen each other in eternity. You are concerned about me. As you tell me, Tsutae-san, I won\u2019t push myself too hard. I need to stay healthy and take care of the house and school for fifty days during your absence. You are concerned about me being alone at night. But starting tonight, Sadako and Kinuko, Tsuji\u2019s children, will be staying with me at night. When I spoke with Mrs. Tsuji about your trip, she said that her children are free and can help me with anything I might need. Aoki-san, too, was concerned about me being alone. She spoke with Tsuji-san about that, and they decided to get the two of them\u2014Sadako and Kinuko\u2014to come and stay with me.<\/em><\/p>\r\n Michiko from Aoki-san\u2019s stayed with me for dinner and left at around 9:30. We had dinner together. At around 10, Sadako and Kinuko came over with pajamas. Mrs. Tsuji said that Iwata-san nowadays begins work around 7 in the morning so Sadako has to go home at 6:30. Therefore, we went to bed right away. It was odd for me to go to bed when it was still not completely dark. But I was so relieved to have someone stay at the house with me.<\/em><\/p>\r\n July 22 (Tues)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sunny<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\r\n The alarm went off at 6:30. Sadako and Kinuko went home. I could have gone back to bed, but no, I got up. Just when I was ironing some clothes, Michiko came over. \u201cDid you come alone?\u201d I asked. \u201cMama dropped me off at Victoria [drive]\u201d She stayed until noon. She played with dolls, then went outside in the back yard to pick flowers. She also danced there. We chitchatted. Thanks to her, I didn\u2019t feel lonely at all\u2026<\/em><\/p>\r\n After dinner, Tanaka Kiyoko-san phoned. She said, \u201cI heard sensei went to Japan. It must be lonely without him. We will come over now to keep you company.\u201d Soon she came with Mieko. They brought some toffy candies and stayed until about nine in the evening. I\u2019m very grateful that everyone is concerned about me, and treating me kindly.<\/em><\/p>\r\n In the evening, I chatted with Mrs. Yakovich on the veranda.<\/em><\/p>\r\n \u201cWhere did your husband go?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\r\n \u201cTo Japan.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\r\n \u201cTo Japan? German submarines are sinking ships with torpedoes these days, you know. Isn\u2019t it dangerous for him to be going to Japan now?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\r\n \u201cI think the Pacific is safer, relatively speaking.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\r\n \u201cWhy didn\u2019t you go too? Are you afraid, because Japan is fighting war?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\r\n \u201c\u2026.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\r\n Tsuji-san\u2019s children came around nine. They looked at photographs, and we talked. After about an hour, we went to bed.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n These are snippets of associational practices of Nikkei women in the prewar community in the Lower Mainland.\u00a0 What comes to the fore is the diversity of their positions and roles as well as modes of interactions shaping communal structures and historical experiences. O\u2019Melia-san and her fellow Sisters remind us that the community was not isolated from mainstream society. These white women engaged and contributed to the community and helped to embed immigrant lives into the fabric of the broader societal environment. Members of women\u2019s associations networked extensively among themselves and with other organizations such as ubiquitous Prefectural Associations (kenjinkai), white women\u2019s associations, and hospitals. They organized themselves to address social issues and to direct the resources of the community toward common public good.<\/p>\r\n Rather than being confined to homes and matters on the domestic front, women were a key force in the community\u2019s public life. All the same, Hanako\u2019s diary suggests that homes could be loci of important social interactions. Hanako, to be sure, was a prominent public figure, but her relational practices extended beyond her professional roles as an educator. Her diary is filled with emotions and affects lacking in more formalized records, offering glimpses of rich human experiences as well as robust networks helping Hanako navigate uncertain times.<\/p>\r\n Social networks cultivated and sustained by these women were integral to the Nikkei community that once thrived in coastal Canada. Indeed, the community was a dynamic complex of associational practices like the ones touched on above. Records from the past speaking to actions and interactions of women in the community are numerous and diverse. Paying attention to their voices, we can gain fuller understandings of the history of Canada\u2019s diverse society as well as Japanese immigrant experiences.<\/span><\/p>","rendered":" Eiji Okawa <\/strong>|\u00a0<\/strong>University of Victoria<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Browse the UBC Open Collections Japanese-Canadian Photograph Collection here.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Japanese-Canadian history is most often discussed in terms of mistreatment of the minority by the Canadian state and society. Indeed, Japanese immigrants and their children were subject to explicit and legal forms of racist marginalization and exclusion throughout the first half of the twentieth century. The outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941 brought Canada\u2019s anti-Japanese policies to unprecedented heights. The government established what it called the \u201cprotected area\u201d along the Pacific coast to expel from it all \u201cpersons of the Japanese race\u201d irrespective of their citizenship status. What followed were internment, forced sale of properties they had to leave behind, as well as their dispersal east of the Rockies. Nearly 4,000 Japanese Canadians were even exiled to war-torn Japan, a country many of them, born and raised in Canada, had never seen. The community was destroyed and their rights were blatantly violated in this shameful chapter of Canadian history.[1]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n This history of injustice is vital to our society especially in the face of entrenched discrimination and inequality persisting to this day. However, in contrast to the prominence of the narrative of victimization in established historical accounts, the social history of the community tends to be overlooked. You don\u2019t have to know anything about a minority to understand they were oppressed, after all. But like any other community, Japanese Canadians have fascinating stories to tell, and these can be analyzed in their own right to enrich our engagements with history. Aiming to provoke interests in sociohistorical experiences of Japanese Canadians and records thereof, this essay looks at the associational lives of several women in the Japanese-Canadian community during the early to mid-twentieth century.<\/p>\n O\u2019Melia-san was a white Catholic Nun who dedicated much of her adult life to Japanese immigrants and their community. This is attested to by her grave, situated in the \u201cEast Asian\u201d section of Vancouver\u2019s Mountain View Cemetery, where graves of Nikkei persons as well as Chinese Canadians are clustered together.[2]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>O\u2019Melia-san\u2019s tomb is surrounded by those of Japanese Canadians. It was her wish to be with them, and so when she died of heart-attack while giving a catechist lecture in 1939 she was buried there. Of course, a cemetery is a place of symbolic significance. Among the most grandiose Nikkei tombstones is a towering twelve-foot stupa, built in 1934 with funds raised by a Buddhist Youth Association. It is dedicated to migrants who died in Canada without any relative or family member to offer them ritual care. During the\u00a0<\/span>Obon<\/em>\u00a0festival of the dead in August, Japanese Canadians make homages to deceased members of their community. O\u2019Melia-san is there, blended as she is into the ritual landscape of the community.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Japanese inscription in the middle says \u201cO\u2019Melia-san\u2019s grave, built by Japanese volunteers.\u201d Beside her stone is Sister Antoinette McDonough\u2019s (d. 1985), built by \u201cJapanese community and friends.\u201d These women belonged to Franciscan Sisters of Atonement and ran convents serving Japanese-Canadian communities in the prewar era.<\/p>\n Kathleen F. O\u2019Melia was born in Norfolk, England in 1869.[3]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>She arrived in Vancouver in 1902. Soon, she began working with Japanese migrants. In 1928, she was ordained in the Sisters of Atonement, which purchased a building at Cordova and Dunlevy Street in Vancouver\u2019s Japanese neighbourhood, around Powell Street. That happened to be right next to Oppenheimer Park, where the famous Nikkei ballclub\u00a0<\/span>Vancouver Asahi<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>put on great shows of tactical baseball against big-swinging players of local teams.<\/p>\n As a Franciscan nun, her formal name was Sister Mary Stella, but Japanese Canadians continued to call her O\u2019Melia-san. Earnest in her religious calling, she proselytized her faith to migrants but also offered services for the community, including English classes, daycare, and kindergarten. These catered to working mothers. It is said that about 275 children attended her kindergarten and daycare in the first year.[4]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n![\"This](\"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/meijiat150\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/445\/2018\/06\/1.0049173.jpg\")
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<\/a> Figure 1.<\/strong> Photo taken by author, March 2018.[\/caption]\r\n<\/a> Figure 2.<\/strong> Photo taken by author, March 2018.[\/caption]\r\n<\/a> Figure 3.<\/strong> A group photo in front of Catholic Japanese Mission on Dunlevy Street in Vancouver, taken ca. 1930. O\u2019Melia-san is standing in the middle of back row. Tasaka Family Collection, NNM 2011.83.1.5.[\/caption]\r\n<\/a> Figure 4.<\/strong> Japanese women in a Steveston cannery working with babies on their backs in 1913. Photograph by F. Dundas Todd. Vancouver Public Library 2071.[\/caption]\r\n<\/a> Figure 5.\u00a0<\/strong>Nikkei youths, women, and men, along with Catholic Sisters in Greenwood. This was a farewell party for people exiled to Japan in 1946. Tasaka Family Collection, NNM 2011.83.1.43[\/caption]\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_301\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"400\"]<\/a> Figure 6.<\/strong> Children, youths, and women and men pose on snow for a photo with Sisters and Priests in Greenwood, December 1946. Tasaka Family Collection, NNM 2011.83.1.52[\/caption]\r\nWomen\u2019s Associations<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n
<\/a> Figure 7.<\/strong> Yataro Arikado Collection, NNM 2010.31.17[\/caption]\r\n<\/a> Figure 8.<\/strong>\u00a0UBC Library Rare Books and Special Collections, Japanese Canadian Research Collection, JCPC 39.001[\/caption]\r\n<\/a> Figure 9.<\/strong> Genzaburo and Kimiko Nakamura Family Collection, NNM 2012.10.1.5.14[\/caption]\r\n<\/a> Figure 10.<\/strong> Nishihata Family Collection, NNM 2010.80.2.78[\/caption]\r\nHanako's Diary<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_305\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"182\"]
<\/a> Figure 11.<\/strong> Hanako and Tsutae Sato in 1921. Canadian Centennial Project Fonds, NNM 2010.23.2.4.472[\/caption]\r\n<\/a> Figure 12.<\/strong> Hanako\u2019s diary, Tsutae and Hanako Sato Fonds, NNM 1996.170.3.4a.1.2.1[\/caption]\r\nCommunity and Associational Practices<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_307\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"1024\"]
<\/a> Figure 13.<\/strong> Hanako and children enjoying themselves during an outing ca. 1920s. Perhaps this was a school picnic. Canadian Centennial Project Fonds, NNM 2010.23.2.4.713[\/caption]\r\nAssociational Lives of Women in the Prewar Japanese-Canadian Community<\/h1>\n
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