Group Portrait of the Cumberland Group of Japanese Road Builders; Thunder River, BC

From this item, LOI has digitized a textual record.

This image consists of roughly two rows of men, both seated and standing, in front of a building at the Thunder River Road Camp. The men are those removed from Cumberland and sent to work on the road projects in the interior of British Columbia during 1942. The first row is seated, with the exception of a man who stands on the right edge. All the men are dressed in white shirts and dark pants wearing boots with the exception of the man four from the left who is wearing a dark collared shirt, and the man four from the right who is wearing wooden sandals. The second row is all standing, dressed in a similar fashion to the front row. The men are of various ages, from young adult to older men with some graying hair. On the back is written: "Cumberland Group, Thunder River B.C."

Fumiko Kawata was born in 1938 in Cumberland BC to parents Itoko and Yoshitoshi Kawata. Yoshitoshi's parents were Sowa & Kinshiro Kawata from Ehime prefecture. Kinshiro came to Canada as a farm labourer on the Empress of Russia Dec 19, 1922, his nearest relative at that time was Tomi Kawata of Yanazaki Mura, Nishiwa gori, Ehime Ken, Japan. Itoko and Yoshitoshi were born in Japan and remained Japanese Nationals.

The digital copies of the records were acquired by the Landscapes of Injustice Research Collective between 2014 and 2018.

This record was digitized in full.