Essondale Patient File for Shizue Izawa

Warning

The LOI Research Team has flagged this record for containing sensitive information. This record contains the following sensitivities:

  • Details or graphic images of serious illness (mental or physical) or mortality of identifiable individual(s).
  • Could cause undue or disproportionate dishonour / embarrassment to self or family.

Essondale Patient File for Shizue Izawa

Description

Title Proper 93-5683 BOX 1157 FILE 27732
Date(s) 1950
General material designation
This file contains a textual record.
Scope and content
Shizue Izawa was admitted to Essondale 18 January 1950 with paranoid schizophrenia. Her mental condition may have been brought on by the death of her husband in 1946 and the forced removal and internment. She moved from Vancouver to Slocan then to New Denver. From her ward notes: “This lady was born in Japan near Hiroshima to a well established family of silk merchants. She was brought up in a fine mansion and her education was in flower arrangement and luxurious arts. Her husband, who was twelve years older than she, had come to Canada and represented it as a land of great prosperity. She came here when she was twenty-two and was sadly disillusioned because he was usually out of work and they were often on relief.” Izawa died 21 May 1962 in Essondale at age 52 of pulmonary congestion and edema/hypertensive and arteriosclerotic heart disease.
Name of creator
British Columbia. Mental Health Services created this archive which were transferred to the BC Archives from 1987 to 2000.
Immediate source of acquisition
The digital copies of the records were acquired by the Landscapes of Injustice Research Collective between 2014 and 2018.
This record was digitized selectively.

Metadata

Title

Essondale Patient File for Shizue Izawa
Publication Information: See Terms of Use for publication and licensing information.

Terminology

Readers of these historical materials will encounter derogatory references to Japanese Canadians and euphemisms used to obscure the intent and impacts of the internment and dispossession. While these are important realities of the history, the Landscapes of Injustice Research Collective urges users to carefully consider their own terminological choices in writing and speaking about this topic today as we confront past injustice. See our statement on terminology, and related sources here.