Itoku Murakami

See Legal History column.

Note: An Itoku Murakami is listed as one of the Japanese-Canadian fishing boat owners whose boat was seized by the Custodian in 1942. According to the fishing boat record for Murakami, he owned a gill-netter worth $800.00. His boat was sold on June 10, 1942, for $260.00 to Nelson Bros. His boat's port of registry was New Westminster, and his home address is listed as Steveston, BC As well, the word "force" is written on his record; in community records we are still trying to determine what such an annotation could mean in the context of an uniformly "forced" seizures and sales of boats. Masoka Fukawa has conjectured that force indicates "without the owner's consent." (Apparently, there was some initial cooperation between Japanese Canadian boat owners and the buyers of their boats; as the sales proceeded, the boats were simply taken without owner cooperation.)