from Teaching in Canadian Exile by Frank Moritsugu and Ghost Town Teachers Historical Society, Toronto, 2001.
Of the 22,000 Japanese Canadians forced to leave the West Coast, more than half chose to stay in British Columbia. Among them were about 3,000 schoolchildren. P.3
Eventually, about 250 nisei became teachers at the BC Security Commission operated schools in the eight BC detention camps for evacuated families.
When the ghost town schools opened in 1942 or 1943 the original teachers were without any formal teacher training. Some fell back on related experiences in their former communities, such as teaching Sunday School or running Canadian Girls in Training (CGIT) groups. And a handful of the camp teachers got their first hand experience of teaching classes of wholly Nisei children at the Hastings Park holding centre during the spring and summer of 1942. P. 20.
Hide Hyodo was in her sixteenth year of teaching in the BC school system when Pearl Harbour was attacked. In that time she was the only one who broke through the unofficial ban against hiring Japanese Canadians as elementary or secondary school teachers. When the war broke out in December 1941, she was teaching at Lord Byng school in Steveston. She was appointed as supervisor/principal at the hastily organized temporary school at Hastings Park in early 1942.
Experience gained at the brief Hastings Park school project during the summer of 1942 was to have strong influence on the ghost town school system that was to develop in the BC interior. One result was the authorities accepting the concept of using young Japanese Canadians as teachers. The other more important was the adoption of the BCSC plan for the BC interior school system which owed its origins to the Hastings Park education project.
On October 23, 1942 Hide Hyodo climbed aboard on the last trainloads of expelled Japanese Canadians to leave Vancouver. First, she stopped at the Tashme camp to help with the initial organization of its Security Commission school. On October 28, she left for the Slocan area, bound for New Denver which was to become her base as supervisor of the school system in the detention camps of interior BC. Pp28- 38.
At the end of October 1942, Hide Hyodo arrived in New Denver which was to be her base as the overall headquarters for the BC Security Commission school operations because of its strategic location in the midst of several camps in the Slocan Valley: New Denver, Popoff, Bay Farm, Sandon, Kaslo, Rosebery, Lemon Creek. Only Tashme was some 300 miles west. P61.
In Tashme, Hiroshi (Rosie) Okuda was the first principal of the school. He wrote that he first volunteered to teach all the mathematics courses at the temporary high school at Hastings Park. When he was delegated to establish the school in Tashme and arrived in Tashme in October 1942, his first two priorities were to find an appropriate building and to recruit the teachers. A barn known as D building became the school and by December 1942 he a complement of teachers. Conversion of the upper floor of a barn into classrooms required partitioning of rooms using removable walls over six feet high so that the building could also be used at times for assemblies, meetings, movies, concerts, dances, etc. Terry Hidaka was assigned to teach the teaching recruits. Registration revealed that there were over 700 students from grades 1 to 8. Grade 8s were accommodated in an annex attached to the single men’s quarters of the apartments across the street. The cold weather prevented the opening of the school in January 1943 until the heating system was repaired, until January 26 for grades 1-4 and January 27 for grades 5-8, and for half day classes while work continued in the building. Pp 82-84.
Schooling in D building had its problems. The sounds from more than 25 classrooms with removable partitions as the only barrier between them sometimes reached crescendo pitch. Text book shortages prevented students from removing them from classrooms. Money was raised to provide additional text books. On Mondays, the hall, which was used for concerts, movies, etc over the weekend, was quickly converted into small rooms by sliding partitions into place. One partition for each classroom had an opening that served as a door. A BCSC blanket over this opening served as a door. Student desks consisted of two seater type, brought in from Vancouver. A permanent room built in one corner served as the principal’s office, staff room and supply room. Pp 91-95
High school education was organized very differently from grades 1-8. The BC Security Commission assumed responsibility only for grades 1-8 so other plans were developed for high school. BC sponsored correspondence courses became the basis for high school education. However, organization and treatment varied from camp to camp. In Tashme, the United Church and Rev W. R. McWilliams were instrumental in setting up the high school. Mr Mac (Rev McWilliams) recruited May McLachlan, who had spent many years in rural Japan prior to and after Pearl Harbour, and who returned to Canada in July of 1942 as part of the M V Gripsholm exchange, to help. The BC Security Commission refused to build a new high school so the high school used the public elementary school rooms after they finished classes. Mr Mac also recruited Ernie Best to teach French and to share the teaching load. Winnifred Awmack (nee McBride) joined the high school teaching staff in September 1944, having no teaching experience but a degree in agriculture and, an interest in assisting the other teachers.
It was during the 1943-44 high school year that the school became an organized student body with a school song and student council that looked after a lot of the non academic activities of the school including a music appreciation class, sports, recreation and a school annual.
In September 1944, the Tashme high school had a total of 175-180 students: 90 in grade 9, about 40 in grade 10, 30 in grade 11 and 15-20 in grade 12. Pp 128-129.
During the school year 1943-44, there were 634 students and 29 teachers in the BC Security Commission school in Tashme, which was the largest enrollment of all of the camps throughout the internment period. P 222.
Tashme school principals were: Hiroshi (Rosie) Okuda 1942-1943; Terry Hidaka acting 1943-44, Myea Okamura 1944-1945, Kayou Ochiai 1945-46.
In the summers of 1943 and 1944 the Tashme teachers, along with their peers from other camps, participated in summer schools for teachers, a program formed to provide formal teaching instruction. These sessions proved to be valuable in giving confidence to the young and inexperienced teachers.
Overall, the often makeshift school system was a success. Students from all of the camp schools were able to successfully integrate into local school systems wherever they moved following internment and lead successful lives.