At the beginning of 1942, Fourteen Mile Ranch was a livestock and dairy farm containing a few farm buildings and a handful of people. A year later, it was a crowded internment camp featuring nearly 350 shacks, two barns renovated as apartments and living quarters, and numerous other functional buildings, with a population of some 2,600 internees, plus BCSC staff and other officials.

NNM 2012.45.1.1.

Physical layout of the camp (PDF)

Road camps located near Tashme

Tashme population chart (PDF)

Chart of the population of all BC internment camps (PDF)

Names on Houses

The NAMES ON HOUSES project was created and developed by the JCCC in Toronto. The JCCC team started with the Tashme Master List held by the Nikkei National Museum which shows the names of Tashme residents and addresses circa November 1942. The map shows a name for each house but the same house may have had two or more resident families living in it over the course of the internment.

Comprehensive list of families and their addresses in Tashme

Database: information about Tashme families

Population

Japanese Canadians began arriving at Tashme in July 1942. Two months later, at the end of September, the Japanese population stood at 2,100, and it reached a peak of 2,644 in January 1943. After that, the population began to decrease as internees were moved to other camps or elected to return to Japan.

When non-Japanese residents, including supervisors, administrators, staff, RCMP officers, hospital staff and their families, are counted in the total, the peak population of the camp was 2,690 in January 1943. Tashme was closed by September 1946.

Layout

Tashme was a self-contained camp with 347 small houses and a variety of other buildings, including a hospital, a sawmill, gardens, a town centre and places of employment. Existing farm buildings were put to use as halls, community centres and apartments for the elderly and infirmed. The large flat field was filled with rows and rows of new buildings constructed to house residents and provide space for the administration of the camp.