Essondale Patient File for Satoru Okada

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 Satoru Okada

Description

Title Proper 93-5683 BOX 1327 FILE 20151
Date(s) 1942
General material designation
This file contains a textual record.
Scope and content
Satoru Okada died 15 September 1967 at age 50 of pulmonary edema due to coronary thrombosis. Hastings Park is listed as his permanent residence on death certificate. The patient had been admitted from Hastings Park, 2 May 1942, with hallucinations. Form ‘A’ was signed by BCSC Secretary C. MacNeil. The patient worked as a boom man on a logging operation. His brother indicates that his mental illness began in 1941 after the patient was forbidden by his eldest brother from pursuing a marriage with a girl whose brother had died of TB for fear of infectiousness. This file includes correspondence with the patient’s brother Hitoshi in Slocan City, and G.W. McPherson etc regarding his assets, which included war bonds. His family evidently lost touch with the patient at time of his death and brother William wrote the hospital in 1991 for details regarding his burial.
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 Satoru Okada
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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.