Tashme School Days
by Marie Katsuno
One summer holiday turned into a five-year stay in an area of West Vancouver in the 1930’s. Due to pneumonia at a tender age and doctor’s advice that perhaps salty breeze may be a helpful remedy, a search for such a place ended at the Great Northern Cannery, a fish-canning village by the water where a few Japanese residents lived. Family acquaintances there and an unoccupied cabin resulted in a change of residence from our home in east Burnaby to this area.
Upon completion of junior and high schools in West Vancouver, the Pacific war erupted and we found ourselves returning to our home in Burnaby. With no other Japanese families in that area, it seems we were almost the last to evacuate in late October. We chose Tashme, the nearest relocation center, expecting to return home soon. We stored large items in the garage and even hid some food under the kitchen floor to be readily available upon our return and finally handed over the house keys to our neighbor across the street.
As we were late arrivals in Tashme, we were placed in a cabin on the last row of living quarters on 10th avenue. It was already severely cold with ice and snow on the ground, with even icicles hanging inside the walls and doors of the entrance. My mother came down with pneumonia. On a cold and clear night with a full moon and the ground covered with packed snow, she was taken by stretcher to the hastily built hospital. A far cry from a Christmas card picture of silver moon and snow; fortunately she came through very well.
Independent living quarters were made for a minimum of five persons. As we were only three in the family, we shared the cabin with another couple. Water and wood were plentiful; water was brought inside to the wooden sink by buckets. We shared the wood-burning stove. Bathroom features were best not recalled.
However, the big public baths were large with plenty of hot running water! If I remember correctly, some of the Issei population waited for short wave news from Japan (the RCMP often turning their eyes the other way and most became good friends) and this would be printed in several sheets and distributed. Needless to say this overseas news and local news would be quite different.
On that last day of October 1942, soon after my arrival in Tashme, I attended a small gathering brought together by Miss Hide Hyodo, Terry Hidaka and other educators. This meeting was convened to provide school age children with a place to continue their learning. From this modest gathering, classes were started shortly thereafter in what had been a huge old barn. Portable wooden panels were erected to divide the elementary grade classes. Japanese men handmade the wooden desks and benches to seat two pupils. Upon opening the big barn door for start of classes, the sound of pupils and movement emanating from inside could be intense at times!
Becoming instant teachers was no easy task; my own first assignment was first graders whom I later realized were more difficult than third and fourth graders. Lacking materials, each evening meant stacks of homework to prepare for the next day’s lessons: colored pictures were drawn on rough newsprint, lessons drawn with a purple pencil onto gelatin pads and hand-rolled onto paper. After printing several pages, items would be hardly visible. Throughout those years with the school, I taught all elementary grades and also assisted high school students with correspondence courses in the evenings. This latter task was initiated with the help from the missionary teachers.
When the B.C. Commission recognized our classes as a regular school, we saw a vast improvement as complete sets of regular textbooks and teaching materials became available. During each summer holiday season all the teachers from the many other camps and areas gathered in New Denver for teachers’ training courses with the assistance of instructors from the Vancouver Normal School.
Despite some great inconveniences of internment life, parents were eager for their children to keep up their studies and absentees were rare. PTA meetings called for patience because of communications gaps, with most of us having some difficulty reaching out to the parents with our less than fluent Japanese. Here is where Miss Kayo Ochiai, later one of our principals, became invaluable because of her excellent knowledge of the Japanese language and also for her poise and confident manner, which put parents at ease.
As years went by living under such close conditions, for the most part we seemed to develop quite a close kinship with our fellow Japanese. A person’s reaction to Tashme depended upon the age of that person at the time of the evacuation. Children had fun and others had their education disrupted, but for the Issei this was generally a time of sorrow. However, many learned to make the most of this confined area, which now seemed like a mini town. Baseball teams with Japanese names were formed; school and public concerts and sports meets were organized; social dances were held in the barn school (partitions were taken down to make a big hall) chaperoned by our missionary teachers (an absolute necessity as far as the Issei were concerned).
May Day queen and maypole dancing prevailed, as did weddings and funerals as life went on. At the same time during those years, many folks moved to other areas. As friends left we would find ourselves gathered at the main entrance of the camp to say farewell to the departing party standing on the backs of trucks. In the meantime we learned the B.C. Custodians had sold our home in Burnaby for $2000, which was duly sent to us, minus their fee. I might add that during these years my father who was already well over 70 years of age had been receiving his old age pension on a regular monthly basis.
With the closure of the camp a year after the end of the Pacific war, the ultimatum of going to Japan or eastern Canada was a very difficult decision for many of us. Because of the advanced age of my parents and their wish to see their homeland once more, I accompanied them with the thought of an adventure, and quite an adventure it was!
My thoughts on returning to Canada, after an absence of more than 50 years, was that it was like making one big circle returning to live in West Vancouver again and in helping at the Japanese Canadian National Museum, not far from where I grew up as a child. I am happy to have reunited with a few of the former students. The United Church missionary teachers were ladies repatriated back to Canada during the war years. They assisted us in Tashme and then returned to their former girl schools in Japan. My own daughter graduated from one such school in Tokyo. I graduated from the United Church kindergarten on Powell and Jackson, which now is the Buddhist Temple.
from Nikkei Images Spring 2002 vol 7 no 1