Roy Ito collection

From this fonds, LOI has digitized 5 textual records and other records.

The collection consists of three series of material assembled by Roy Ito over the course of his life. The first series, including a diary, a flag, correspondence, maps, government reports, and newspaper clippings, relates to his experience as a Japanese Canadian sergeant at the close of the Second World War. The second series relates to the Japanese Canadian experience on the Pacific coast of Canada, and includes books, a map, reports, and historical texts and translations. The third series, comprised of correspondence, newspaper articles and photographs, relates to Ito’s involvement in the Redress movement during the 1980s, and the fourth series, comprised of manuscripts, interview transcripts, digital records on floppy disks, notebooks, and photographs, relates to Ito’s research and writing. The fifth series is comprised of Ito’s family, personal and travel photographs.

Roy Ryoichi Ito was born in British Columbia. During the internment period he was relocated with his family initially to work on a sugar beet farm in Alberta, then to Kaslo, BC, where he worked on The New Canadian newspaper, then to Hamilton, Ontario, where he began studies at McMaster University in 1943. He was recruited to join the army, and served as a sergeant with the Canadian Intelligence Corps in India and South-East Asia. After the Second World War, Ito completed his university degree and became a teacher, and later was employed for twenty-five years as a school principal. He retired in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1984. Ito was married and had four children. He wrote several social science books for use in schools and two histories of Japanese Canadians entitled Stories of My People and We Went to War.

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